National statistics

Police funding for England and Wales 2015 to 2023

Published 12 July 2022

Applies to England and Wales

Frequency of release: Annual

Forthcoming releases: Home Office statistics release calendar

Home Office responsible statistician: Jodie Hargreaves

Press enquiries: pressoffice@homeoffice.gov.uk

Telephone: 0300 123 3535

Public enquiries: policingstatistics@homeoffice.gov.uk

Introduction

This release contains information on agreed funding for policing in England and Wales between the financial years ending March 2016 and March 2023. Chapter 3 also contains high level information on funding back to the financial year ending March 2011.

Key Findings

For the financial year ending March 2023:

• £16,987 million in funding for policing in England and Wales has been agreed
• overall funding will increase by £1,111m (7.0%) compared with the previous financial year, in nominal terms
• overall funding will increase by 2.8% in real terms
• funding has grown in real terms for the last eight years, following a decline between the financial years ending 2011 and 2015

Note: Separate to these annual statistics, the Home Office typically makes year-on-year comparisons between each annual police funding settlement. Due to a difference in scope, such as the inclusion of funding outside of the police funding settlement in the statistics, figures will not match the police funding settlement exactly. The latest police funding settlement shows that in the financial year ending March 2023, funding will increase by up to £1.1bn compared with the previous year, bringing the total up to £16,870m. More information on how to reconcile between figures in these statistics and the latest police funding settlement can be found in Annex A of these statistics.

National Statistics status

In 2021 this statistical series underwent an OSR assessment of compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. Shortly after the publication of Police Funding: England and Wales 2015 to 2022, in July 2021, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) wrote to the Home Office confirming their designation of National Statistics.

User engagement survey

To expand on the work started as a part of the OSR assessment of these statistics, we have launched a user engagement survey for 2022 to help shape future publications of these statistics.

We want to identify further current uses and users of the data as well as provide a chance for users to give their suggestions on how the publication can better meet their needs. Whilst the survey will be anonymous by default, we encourage regular users who are interested in establishing an ongoing dialogue with the Home Office to provide their contact details when prompted, as this will help develop the statistics and our user engagement plan. For more information on user engagement see chapter 4 of the user guide.

1. Introduction

The overall sum of Government funding for policing is set at Spending Reviews (where the Government determines how it will fund public services over several years), whilst the detail is outlined and agreed annually. The majority of public funding for the police forces in England and Wales is provided by the Home Office and is agreed by the House of Commons on an annual basis at the police funding settlement.

Each year the Home Office produces a Police Grant Report which is published and voted on by Parliament and contains grant funding allocations for the following year to be paid out under the Police Act 1996. The Home Office accompanies publication of the Police Grant Report with a Written Ministerial Statement (WMS), providing context and further information on funding not set out through the Police Grant Report, such as Council Tax precept and direct funding for national policing priorities.

The funding set out in the WMS and the Police Grant Report is collectively referred to as the police funding settlement.

In addition to central Government funding, Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) set a local police precept which is part of Council Tax. Police precept accounts for around 34% of the funding PCCs receive via the settlement and is paid directly by local taxpayers.

This statistical release contains analysis of published figures from the police funding settlement, in-year funding agreed outside of the settlement, and Council Tax precept figures by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (for English forces) and the Welsh Government (for Welsh forces).

This bulletin is focused on the main elements of funding for policing as set out to the House of Commons each year as part of the annual police settlement process, plus any significant in-year funding announced after the settlement had been agreed. Therefore, the funding considered here does not therefore constitute the whole budget for policing either in a particular Police Force Area, policing body or overall.

For more information about the scope of this publication, definitions, and quality considerations, please consult our user guide.

2. Overall funding for policing since financial year ending March 2016

2.1 Funding for policing in the financial year ending March 2023

For the financial year ending March 2023, an allocation of £16,987 million has been agreed in funding for policing in England and Wales. This represents an increase of £1,111 million (7.0%) compared with the previous year, in nominal terms.

This total consists of both police resource and capital funding. Resource funding includes Government funding to PCCs; police precept; funding for national priorities (including the Serious Violence Fund from the year ending March 2020 ); and counter-terrorism police funding. Figure 2.1 below shows the funding for each of these areas for the financial year ending March 2023.

Figure 2.1 Overall annual funding for policing, financial year ending March 2023

Source: Table 1a

Notes:

1. Numbers (1) to (5) in the chart correspond to lines marked (1) to (5) in Table 1a, indicating how the different elements of funding sum to the overall total. Table 1a provides a further, more detailed breakdown of these funding streams. For full definitions of each funding stream included, please refer to the glossary in the accompanying user guide.

Of the four main resource funding areas (categories one to four as shown in figure 2.1, excluding capital funding) National Priorities (including Serious Violence funding) will see the largest growth in percentage terms, increasing by 10.5.% (£120 million) against the financial year ending March 2022.

Council Tax precept income will see the next largest growth in percentage terms, increasing by 6.1% (£284 million) over this period. Council Tax referendum principles are set each year for PCCs in England by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). These set a level above which an increase in Band D bill level triggers a local referendum. The principles for the latest financial year were that an increase above £10 for an equivalent Band D property would trigger a local referendum. Most PCCs chose to increase their precept level by £10 this year.

Government funding to PCCs, which makes up the largest proportion of the funding settlement, will see an additional £518 million increase compared with the last financial year. This is driven by a nominal increase of 5.9% in core grant funding to PCCs. In the financial years prior to the year ending March 2023, government funding to PCCs reported in the police funding settlement has included special branch funding (see the user guide for a full definition), totalling £43.9 million in the year ending March 2022. From the funding settlement for the financial year ending March 2023 onwards, special branch funding has been transferred to the counter terrorism policing grant. Therefore, comparing on a like-for-like basis an overall increase of £550 million in government funding for PCCs will be seen in the financial year ending March 2023. Comparing on a like-for-like basis, counter terrorism policing funding will increase by 2.2% over this same period.

National Priorities funding includes direct government investment at a national level not distributed to PCCs through the usual police funding formula. A full breakdown of national priorities funding is included in Table 3 (for the financial year ending March 2023) and Table 6 (for previous financial years) of the accompanying data tables. National Priorities funding is intended to support implementing key policies and projects within policing and therefore the structure of this funding can change substantially each year. Final amounts spent in any given year may be more or less than the numbers stated here due to changes during the year. Funding allocations for individual national priorities can therefore not be compared between the year ending March 2023 and previous years.

For the financial year ending March 2023, PCCs will receive all core funding as resource, providing maximum flexibility whilst still providing options for investing in critical infrastructure. Capital funding is therefore solely provided to national policing programmes and projects for the year ending March 2023.

2.2 Funding for policing since the financial year ending March 2016

Since the financial year ending March 2016, overall funding for policing has increased nominally by £4,927 million (40.9%). In real terms, funding has increased by £2,643 million (18.4%) over this period. Figure 2.2 below shows the overall total of funding for policing each year in nominal terms.

Figure 2.2 Overall annual funding for policing since financial year ending March 2016 (nominal)

Source: Table 1a

Notes:

1. Numbers (1) to (5) in the chart correspond to lines marked (1) to (5) in Table 1a, indicating how the different elements of funding sum to the overall total. Table 1a provides a further, more detailed breakdown of these funding streams. For full definitions of each funding stream included, please refer to the glossary in the accompanying user guide.

Figure 2.2 shows that overall funding for policing (including funding for PCCs and national priorities) will have increased nominally every financial year since the year ending March 2016.

Over this period, Council Tax precept will see the largest nominal growth, increasing from £3,105 million to £4,933 million.

Government funding to PCCs remained fairly stable between the financial years ending March 2016 and March 2019. Since then, Government funding to PCCs will have increased year on year, driven by investment in the Police Uplift Programme (resulting in increases to core funding and Police Uplift Programme grants) as well the introduction of pension grants from April 2019.

First announced by HM Treasury as part of the 2019 Spending Review, an in-year grant commenced in the financial year ending March 2020 to support the recruitment of new officers as a part of the Police Uplift Programme. The programme aims to deliver the manifesto commitment to recruit an additional 20,000 police officers in England and Wales by 31 March 2023. This Police Uplift Programme Grant however does not represent the full extent of the funding for the Police Uplift Programme. The majority of funding for the Police Uplift Programme is included within core grant funding to PCCs, whilst a proportion is ring-fenced outside of the core grant. The nominal size of the ringfence has varied each year of the programme, reflecting the different stages of delivery, though the proportion has remained relatively stable. The Home Office produce statistics on a quarterly basis monitoring the progress of the programme.

Home Office funding for National Priorities (including Serious Violence Fund) will have also increased since the year ending March 2016, from £449 million to £1,266 million. Since the year ending March 2019, this has included a new Serious Violence fund and County Lines funding, totalling £160 million in the latest year.

3. Funding for policing before the financial year ending March 2016 and real terms changes in funding

The Government regularly reviews how it will fund public services in the years ahead in exercises known as Spending Reviews. Between Spending Reviews, the structure of funding for policing can change significantly with specific programmes or policing bodies moving between being funded from within or outside the police funding settlement announced each year to Parliament.

It is therefore difficult to make direct comparisons between current policing funding figures and those in the years prior to the financial year ending March 2016 due to a number of significant changes in the structure of policing funding and policing over the period.

Figure 3.1, however, provides a high-level overview of total annual funding since the financial year ending March 2011. Whilst effort has been made to maximise comparability, consideration should be given to the changes in funding structure detailed in our user guide.

Figures include funding for National Priorities agreed in the annual police settlement, counter-terrorism funding and capital funding as well as government and precept funding for PCCs. Breakdowns of each of these individual funding streams prior to the year ending March 2016 are however not included in this publication. This is because the changes to the structure of the policing and policing funding previously mentioned mean that definitions of these funding streams would not be consistent prior to the financial year ending March 2016.

Figure 3.1 Overall annual funding for policing since financial year ending March 2011 (nominal and real terms)

Source: Table 4

Notes:

1. Figures have been converted to real terms using the latest GDP deflators available at time of publication (published July 2022). As these statistics are forward looking, GDP deflators have been derived from forecast changes in GDP. During times of economic instability (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) there is increased uncertainty in OBR’s GDP deflator forecasts. This publication will not be updated periodically to reflect any ongoing changes to this forecast. For further information, please refer to the user guide.

Figure 3.1 shows that following a nominal decline in funding for policing between the financial years ending March 2011 and March 2015, funding has grown steadily each year since as explained in chapter 2. This has driven an overall nominal increase of 31.8% in police funding since year ending March 2011.

Real terms comparisons

When compared with the previous year, overall funding for policing (including any in-year adjustments) for the financial year ending March 2023 will increase by 2.8% in real terms. This will be the eighth consecutive year in which policing funding has increased in real terms.

Compared with the financial year ending 2016, overall funding for policing will have increased by 18.4% in real terms. Table 1b accompanying this publication shows that this has been driven particularly by strong real terms growth in National Priorities funding agreed in the police funding settlement (which has increased by 137%), Counter-Terrorism funding (increased by 46%) and Council Tax precept (increased by 33.6%). Government funding to PCCs has also grown in real terms over this period by 3.4%.

Between the financial years ending March 2011 and March 2015, as shown in figure 3.1, overall policing funding fell in real terms each year. However, as a result of the recent real terms increases, overall policing funding (as described in these statistics) will be at the highest level since the financial year ending March 2011, with a 2.7% increase in real terms between the financial years ending March 2011 and March 2023. This, however, is not necessarily reflective of total funding for policing over this period due to the reasons described at the beginning of this chapter. Neither is this increase necessarily reflective of funding received by individual PCCs due to strong real terms increases in funding streams not distributed directly to PCCs, as discussed in the paragraphs above.

Annex A: Reconciling between these statistics and the annual police funding settlement

The latest annual police funding settlement, published provisionally in December 2021 and finalised in February 2022, stated that in the financial year ending March 2023, overall funding would total up to £16.9 billion.

As explained in the user guide accompanying these stats, there are a number of differences between these statistics and the police funding settlement. Table A1 below demonstrates exactly where these differences occur.

Table A1: Funding for policing for the financial year ending March 2023, as described in the Police funding: England and Wales statistics and annual Police funding settlement

Funding Stream	Police funding: England and Wales statistics(£m)	Police funding settlement (£m)
Total government funding to PCCs	£9,622	£9,622
Council Tax precept	£4,933	Up to £4,895
National priorities	£1,266	£1,185
Counter terrorism grant	£979	£979
Capital funding	£188	£188
Total	£16,987	Up to £16,870

As shown in Table A1, at the point of publication of the annual police funding settlement, the exact figure for Council Tax precept is unknown. An upper bound estimate is therefore used based on Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts and DLUHC Council Tax principles. At the time of publication of these statistics, actual Council Tax decisions have been published by DLUHC and Welsh Government.

These statistics also include a number of funding streams agreed outside of the police funding settlement. National priorities totals in this publication include Serious Violence funding of £130 million agreed outside of the funding settlement (in addition to £50.1 million of Serious Violence funding and £30.0 million of County Lines funding included in the settlement).