Safer Communities cash could end in 2011

10.50.06am GMT Tue 17th Nov 2009

Money to pay for Police Community Support Officers could run out In 2011

Cllr Qasim Khan will be questioning council officers about how they will deal with the loss of £13m of short term cash for Safer Communities after March 2011.

Speaking at the Safer and Stronger Communities Committee on 12th November, he will draw attention to 20 areas of funding which are not secure and in particular the funding of Police Community Support Officers ( PCSOs) which disappears in less than eighteen months time.

He said,

" The Council will have to make some very serious decisions very quickly about how to handle this problem. Just looking at PCSOs, there are about 170 of them in Bradford paid for in a wide variety of ways none of which is secure beyond March 2011.

To carry on in exactly the same way as now will require £5m of public money from the council and the police at a time when money is going to be in short supply. Across West Yorkshire, which has about 600 PCSOs, the police would have to find £12m just to stand still.

Yet without the PCSOs, the Neighbourhood Policing Teams which are valued highly by the public, could collapse.

Some other councils, including Leeds have already put money in their budgets for their 30% of the cost of PCSOs and this is something Bradford will have to face when the Working Neighbourhoods Fund ends.

There is work going on right across the council now about how to handle all these problems. This committee should be able to scrutinise this work where it relates to community safety including all the projects on this list."