KIM McGUINNESS: Why I’m proud to stand by our police officers and give them the resources today to fight crime tomorrow

Northumbria Police needs to make savings of around £8million and without raising the precept they’d need to find around £4million more. And why are we in this mess? The answer is because Government will not fully fund local policing.

We all know costs are rising and yet the amount we have available from the Home Office to pay for policing has not risen.

As I explained at the latest Police and Crime Panel, finding the £8million alone would be difficult; finding an extra £4million in cuts would be the equivalent of 113 jobs gone.

I’m not prepared to make cuts that deep to policing.

And as my consultation has shown the majority of people don’t want that to happen either. 74% of all respondents to our consultation supported a small increase in the precept in order to prevent cuts to frontline policing.

While I am very understanding of those who weren’t in favour because their money is tight enough or because they believe money to rescue a public service should not be coming from their purse – I get it. I also get that by not increasing the precept I’d be handing the police a massive cut in funding and I’m not prepared to do that.

Our police work incredibly hard to keep us safe and my job is back those officers and make sure they have what they need to fight crime. That’s why we need a small increase of 72p a month for most households.

As a result of this, we can not only save jobs but invest further in frontline policing. The precept will allow us to hire more investigators, create a force-wide unit to bring an end to motorbike anti-social behaviour and consider new options in rebuilding a physical presence in our neighbourhoods.

There are going to be some politicians who criticise me for raising the precept – for investing in the force. They will try and convince you that it would be easy to avoid this choice. It’s not. The option is to make cuts worth 113 job losses at Northumbria Police or make a small increase to allow us to save jobs and expand crime fighting squads. A small increase it is.

In doing so, I’m proud to stand by our officers and to give them the resources today to fight crime tomorrow.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​