‘UK police force threatens court action against May’
One of the biggest police forces in the UK is threatening court action against the British home secretary over revelation of Theresa May’s deep funding cuts, a report says.
The West Midlands police force is considering a lawsuit after May was said to be secretly planning a major switch in millions of police funding from city forces to county constabularies, the Guardian reported.
A leaked internal analysis by senior police finance officials seen by the Guardian modeling the impact of the home secretary’s proposed changes shows that the major urban forces, including the West Midlands, would face deep cuts in funding as a result.
Relations between the force and the home secretary became so strained over the issue that the police have been reduced to making an unusual Freedom of Information Act request to demand disclosure of the figures.
The figures from the Police and Crime Commissioners Treasurers’ Society (PACCTS) indicate that the Metropolitan police face a 43% reduction in their Whitehall grant in 2015-16 as a result of the funding formula changes under one likely scenario.
The other big city forces in England also face deep cuts in their Home Office grants for next year, including 25% for West Midlands and Merseyside, 23% in Greater Manchester and 18% in Northumbria.
The disclosure of the scale of withdrawal of millions of pounds from inner-city policing is likely to fuel the tensions between police and the home secretary.
Earlier this week, the Guardian disclosed that senior officers were working on the assumption that a further 22,000 police jobs could disappear by 2020 as a result of the next round of spending cuts.
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