Yorkshire: Cut is “severe blow” to police cover

The chairman of Humberside Police Authority has described a Home Office refusal to reinstate funding for Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) as a "severe blow" to neighbourhood policing – reports the Yorkshire Post.

Cllr Graham Stroud and Chief Constable Tim Hollis wrote a joint letter to Ministers asking them to reconsider a decision to withdraw funding for PCSOs announced in December.

Cllr Stroud said: "We had the courage to advance our recruitment of PCSOs, fully believing the government would honour its commitment to help us fund our programme.

"Now we are left in a very difficult position. The unprecedented pressure on police budgets is so severe that it is unlikely that we will even be in a standstill position … this could also mean that police officer numbers will be put seriously at risk."

Recruitment of PCSOs had been a major strand of Labour’s 2005 General Election manifesto.

But the U-turn on the second phase of the programme is likely to leave Yorkshire with 600 fewer PCSOs by 2008 than voters were promised.

Sadly the money to pay for these PCSOs and much more besides was promised in December 2005 to the European Union instead. An extra £2.5bn a year was awarded to the EU by Tony Blair despite auditors having been unable to tell us how the EU has spent the tens of billions of pounds of public money it has already received over the last twelve years.

Policing is just one of many public services which are now set to suffer.