Councillor asks Home Secretary for fairer police funding

In the letter to James Cleverly, the Southampton Cabinet Member for Safer City, Cllr Matt Renyard, called for greater Government financial support to ease the pressure put on local taxpayers.

He said that Southampton is seeing a 35 per cent higher crime rate compared to the rest of Hampshire while central government police funding has decreased.

In the letter, Cllr Renyard said: “Over the last thirteen years, government funding has decreased from 68 percent to 59 percent, whilst local taxpayers have seen the proportion they pay increasing from 32 percent to 41percent.

“In effect we in Southampton are paying more and getting less.”

READ MORE: Crime in Southampton has gone down, police boss says

The Southampton Cabinet member said that since 2010, the city has seen the loss of experienced police officers while taxpayers are expected to pay more.

It comes after it was revealed that Southampton has the ninth highest amount of violent crime when compared to population in the country.

The labour councillor is calling on the Home Secretary to implement a fairer funding formula (Image: NQ)The labour councillor added: “It is no coincidence that Southampton is ninth on a recently published 'Top 10 most violent cities in England and Wales' when compared against these factors.”

He continued by stating that Hampshire Constabulary has long been at the mercy of a Police Funding Formula – stating he feels it is “disproportionally unfair.”

The Police Funding Formula allocates funding based on population size with larger urban areas such as Manchester getting a larger sums of funding compared to rural areas.

This puts areas with partially rural populations that contain significant urban populations – like Hampshire - at a disadvantage.

Cllr Renyard said that as a member of the Police and Crime Panel, he is expected to vote to support the Police And Crime Commissioner with yet another increase in local taxation.

He said: “I am not sure that I can justify this for another year, after supporting it last year, to aid in the police recruitment effort.

“I have therefore taken the step of writing this open letter, in asking that the Secretary for the Home Office recognises these impacts and implements a fairer funding formula.”

He also asked Police and Crime Commissioner Donna Jones to reconsider the ever-increasing cost put onto local people “at a time when many are struggling.”

Ms Jones previously said the city benefits from more police than anywhere else in the county, with crime in Southampton in fact decreasing when comparing 2022 with 2023.