Sussex Police chief warns of service cutbacks amid 'significant' budget gap
Chief Constable Jo Shiner says Sussex ‘remained one of the lowest-funded forces in the country’
The Chief Constable of Sussex Police has warned that the force will have a ‘significant budget gap’ in 2024/25.
Jo Shiner spoke during a meeting with Police & Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne on Friday (December 15) where she said Sussex ‘remained one of the lowest-funded forces in the country’.
The force will receive a settlement grant of £130,179,042 from the government in 2024/25 – an increase of just under £10million on 2023/24.
But CC Shiner said that the budget would still fall short, even if the police’s portion of the average Band D council tax bill was increased by the maximum £13 next year.
Stressing that this was not because the force was inefficient or ineffective, the Chief said that tens of millions of pounds worth of savings had been made over the years.
But issues such as inflation and the increased complexity and costs of some investigations had not made things easy.
She added: “Put simply, we are in a position that, without the maximum amount of funding that we are able to achieve, I as a Chief Constable am going to have to look very, very seriously at what we do and stop doing next year and in the next few years.”