Devon & Cornwall Police to get £19m of extra funding next year to help cut crime
The Home Secretary says it will help to make our streets safer
Devon and Cornwall Police are getting £19m of extra funding to help cut crime.
Our force will get over £375 million for the year 2022 to 2023, up from £355m the year before.
The Home Secretary made the announcement this week saying it will help to deliver safer streets across the country.
Nationally policing will receive a funding boost of up to £1.1 billion next year.
Priti Patel says the boost in resources will help support the delivery of the Beating Crime Plan, which set out the Government’s mission to deliver fewer victims, safer neighbourhoods, and a more secure country.
In particular, the Plan focuses on driving down homicide, serious violence and neighbourhood crime – to ensure that everyone can benefit from the security that a safe home, street and country provides.
The additional funding will allow police forces to continue the work already being done to target criminals, which has seen:
• A 14% fall in overall crime (excluding fraud and computer misuse) between June 2019 and June 2021.
• 11,053 additional officers hired across England and Wales – 55% of the target of 20,000 extra police officers by March 2023.
• Over 1,500 county lines closed, over 7,400 arrests, £4.3m in drugs seized and more than 4,000 vulnerable people safeguarded, thanks to our investment in shutting down county lines since 201.
• Almost 16,000 knives and other dangerous weapons removed from the streets last year thanks to police use of stop and search powers.
• 300,000 at risk young people reached through Violence Reduction Units, set up across the country thanks to £105.5m in funding. This forms part of the £242m we’ve invested since 2019 to zone in on serious violence and homicide hotspots.
Within the total package, forces will also be given £550 million more from government grants, including funding for hiring the 20,000 extra officers promised by the Government by the end of March 2023. The successful recruitment campaign has already seen more than 11,000 additional police officers join up and make a difference in communities across England and Wales.
229 extra officers had been recruited by Devon & Cornwall Police as part of the uplift, as of 30th September 2021.
Home Secretary, Priti Patel, said: “Crimes including theft, burglary and knife crime are down, we’ve got an additional 11,053 police officers on our streets, and we’ve shut down 1,500 drugs lines which exploit the young and the vulnerable.
“But we must go further and faster to make our communities even safer, so today I am giving our excellent police forces and law enforcement agencies more funding to do just that, in line with our Beating Crime Plan.
“Reducing crime is a top priority for this Government and I will continue working with police leaders to ensure this unprecedented investment results in less crime and fewer victims.”
Police and Crime Minister Kit Malthouse said: “Police officers are doing great work pursuing drug gangs, protecting vulnerable people from harm and tackling neighbourhood crimes such as theft. This cash injection means that can clamp down on the crimes that really matter to people with even more determination.
“Police forces have already benefitted from extra officers being out on the streets after more than 11,000 have been hired to forces across England and Wales over the last two years, helping to drive crime down.
“This increase in funding will see even more officers hired to tackle crime, continue to remove weapons from our streets and support communities to feel safer.”