Labour caught in new crisis over £118m police funding gap allowing criminals to run riot

Criminals will “operate with increasing impunity” because of Labour’s police funding crisis, critics have warned.

Police chiefs warned on Friday that a £100 million funding boost is a “tiny percentage” of what they need.

And Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp warned “law and order is taking a back seat to trade union handouts” under Labour.

He added that fewer officers will be patrolling Britain’s streets because of Rachel Reeves’s national insurance “tax grab”.

Mr Philp said: “The warning lights are flashing across our police forces, as Labour have failed to stump up the funding needed to stop massive cuts to frontline services.

“Our police services face a £118 million shortfall, which puts over 1800 police jobs at risk.

“Law and order is taking a back seat to trade union handouts under this Government.

“The only winners here are the criminals who can operate with increasing impunity as our police are left with huge funding shortfalls.

“Make no mistake, this is a crisis of Labour’s making – Rachel Reeves’s National Insurance tax grab gobbles up around a fifth of new police funding.

“Labour has chosen to send police numbers tumbling, and the Home Office must urgently set out whether this is new money or whether Yvette Cooper is cutting the police to pay the Chancellor’s job tax.”

The Government confirmed it will invest an extra £100 million into neighbourhood policing, adding to £100 million announced in December for England and Wales to put 13,000 more police officers on the streets by 2029.

Lincolnshire Police Chief Constable Paul Gibson warned he may have to cut 400 officers as his force has a £14 million funding blackhole.

Mr Gibson said the extra cash was a “tiny percentage” of what chiefs needed.

The £200 million, which is part of the Police Funding Settlement published on Friday, is about “visible, accessible policing”, Downing Street said.

Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said she was “not pretending” that police forces were not facing funding challenges, and decisions would need to be made locally on how many officers to have.

Mr Gibson said: “There may be some potential extra money to support the neighbourhood policing pledge. We welcome any additional funding that is allocated to policing, but unfortunately this will be a tiny percentage of what we need.

“There is a simple and stark message: without urgent and significant funding, I will need to reduce our organisation by over 400 officers and staff.”

He added he had cancelled police recruitment and would need to start reducing police staff numbers “significantly and immediately”, while also working with Home Office officials to address the situation.

Police recorded almost 200,000 sex crimes last year as the violence against women and girls epidemic continues.

Officers opened 199,445 investigations into sex offences in the year to September 2024, including nearly 70,000 rape probes.

Statisticians revealed both were record highs, heaping more pressure on ministers and police chiefs to end the crisis.

This is a staggering four-fold increase compared to 15 years ago, analysis has revealed.

And separate Home Office figures revealed 6,000 crimes are going unsolved every day.

Some 2,136,252 crimes went unsolved across England and Wales in the year ending September 2024.

This accounted for nearly 40% of all crimes recorded that year.

Meanwhile, just 363,843 crimes resulted in a suspect being charged or summonsed – just 6.8% of cases.

According to the ONS figures, knife crime recorded by police in England and Wales stood at 55,008 offences in the year to September 2024, up 4% from 52,969 in the previous 12 months and just below the pre-pandemic level of 55,170 in the year to March 2020.

Dame Diana said the Government was “starting from a difficult position” after 14 years under the , but around £1 billion of additional funding is going to forces from April and she is meeting with struggling police forces.

“Those police forces, and I’m very well aware of Essex and Lincolnshire, those police forces that are struggling, we want to work with them. We want to make this work,” she told LBC.

Essex Police said this week it needed “urgent action” to address a budget shortfall and was looking at axing all police community support officers and reducing the number of staff.

On Friday, Essex Police said the extra £100 million would go “some way” to bridging its £5.3 million funding gap.

“We’ve lobbied hard for this funding to be increased through the consultation period. The decision we announced earlier this week has created concern and has resulted in change,” Roger Hirst, the Essex Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, said.

The new investment for more officers is scheduled for the next financial year and each police force will set out plans to use it to increase patrols by early spring.

The Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley on Thursday confirmed the country’s biggest police force will not make cuts to neighbourhood policing, despite a “stretch in the system”.

Meanwhile, Police and Crime Commissioner for Gloucestershire, Chris Nelson, said he was pleased the Government had listened to concerns in the “11th hour”, which will help with neighbourhood policing while budgets remain stretched.

Reacting to the cash boost on Friday, National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) chairman Chief Constable Gavin Stephens welcomed the investment in neighbourhood policing, saying it is a “vital part of how we engage with our communities, building trust and confidence locally”.

It comes after ministers set out a provisional 3.5% real-terms increase in funding for forces with a £986.9 million boost in December.

That fell short of the £1.3 billion which chief constables said police forces would need to plug funding gaps over the next two years.

NPCC lead for finance, Chief Constable Paul Sanford, said then that the funding settlement presented “real challenges” for policing, and would “inevitably lead to cuts across forces”.

Total funding to police forces will be up to £17.5 billion next year under the final settlement, an increase of up to £1.1 billion on the previous year.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the investment in neighbourhood policing marked a “major turning point” for policing.

Ms Cooper added: “Restoring local policing will not happen overnight, but this funding boost will get more officers into our town centres and rural areas.”

Dame Diana also said more officers on the ground would help to target antisocial behaviour and “record-breaking” levels of shoplifting.

The funding will be split between every force in England and Wales and is for them to decide how to spend, Downing Street said.

The 13,000 neighbourhood officers could be newly recruited or they could be “currently serving officers being moved into neighbourhood roles”, a No 10 spokesman said.

Asked if the Prime Minister had a preference for new recruitment or shifting officers into neighbourhood roles, he said: “I think this is about visible, accessible policing and officers on the streets for people to turn to and rely on if they feel unsafe.”