Tighter budgets could lead to staff cuts, warns Gwent Police Chief.
Chief Constable Pam Kelly has been speaking to the Welsh Affairs Committee in Parliament.
Last updated 12th Jul 2023
The chief constables of Wales's four police forces have warned that unless issues over funding are sorted out, 'good staff' may have to be let go.
The Chief Constable for Gwent Pam Kelly says police are being hit by the same financial struggles affecting people across the board.
''All public services are struggling and we know that and we know the difficulties in terms of funding being available and distributed''.
Kelly went on to describe just how much money her police force are expected to save this year.
''For a small force such as Gwent needing to find £5 million this year, that is significant.''
Kelly spoke about how funding issues could affect keeping their full workforce in employment.
“The establishment of those 20,000 officers, quite rightly, needs to be maintained. That means that the only area that we can go to as it were for funding for savings are police staff.
''It's our police staff their answer online our 999 calls, our custody detention officers, our cyber analysts or digital forensic analysts, they're ordinarily police staff or not warranted officers.''
The Chief Constable then confirmed that if additional funding is not found, then jobs will have to be on the chopping block.
''It means that we're actually got potentially going to lose good people with good experience because we can't afford to keep them.”