The amount people pay to South Wales Police next year could rise by £1.20 a month for some households.
The police and crime commissioner Alun Michael is proposing the increase for Band D equivalent properties as part of the force’s budget setting for 2022/2023.
The report added that a majority of council tax payers in most of South Wales Police’s local authority areas will pay much less than this with 87% of households in Merthyr Tydfi l set to pay less than this amount.
Read more: You can find more stories from Merthyr here.
The force’s council tax property analysis showed that 68% of the residents in the South Wales Police area are below Band D and the majority would pay between 18p and 25p extra per week, excluding receipt of any council tax discounts or benefits.
If approved, the increase in the precept would generate £302.11 in council tax from a Band D household, £268.54 from Band C, £234.97 from Band B and £201.41 from Band A.
From B and E there would be £369.25, Band F £436.38, Band G £503.52, Band H £604.22 and Band I £704.92.
Here are the total precept amounts for each of the seven areas and the Band D tax bases
- Cardiff £45.04m and £149,107.
- Swansea £28.13m and £93,114
- Bridgend £16.48m and £54,568.51
- Merthyr Tydfil £5.61m and £18,587.44
- Neath Port Talbot £14.62m and £48,393.68
- Rhondda Cynon Taf £23.47m and £77,707
- Vale of Glamorgan £18.72m and £61,978
The report said the force would need to find a further £4.5m worth of savings to balance the budget.
The inflationary and other increases in costs that South Wales Police faces in 2022/2023 add up to £23 million.
This includes the additional employer national insurance contributions which are due to commence from April 2022, and are forecast to add £2.1 million to the pay bill.
It also includes provision for a 2.5% staff pay award in 2022, plus any further increase needing to absorbed within the total funding envelope.
The cost pressures of £23 million, when set against the total increase in Government grant of £11.4 million, leaves a gap of £7.2 million after deducting savings of £4.5 million, of which £1.8 million form part of the provisional settlement.
The report said that South Wales Police will continue to have below average cost for policing in Wales in terms of Band B and D properties and is mid table in terms of percentage of precept to budget, across England and Wales.
The proposed revenue budget for 2022/2023 is £346.36m with a capital programme of £28m including £6.7m of reserves.
In the report, Mr Michael said: “I have weighed up all the relevant issues and the significant risks, balanced with the need to both protect South Wales Police and be fair to the taxpayers of South Wales.”
He later added: “This increase provides very little flexibility within the budget, and will require continued very tight financial discipline and strict control in order to achieve a balanced budget in the 2022/23 year.
“In view of the pressure on residents, I have considered whether there is scope to further reduce the budget, and I have concluded that to do so would put at risk the service we provide to the people of South Wales and be likely to disadvantage those who are most vulnerable and live in our poorer communities.”
There were 1,630 responses to the consultation which was a 63% increase on the previous year and is the highest number it has received.
For the first time, a majority of 55% of responses indicated that they would not be willing to pay more in 2022.
Since austerity started in 2010/2011, South Wales Police has had to deliver a total of £56 million worth of cuts to produce balanced budgets in each year on the back of a £45 million cut in police grant funding since 2010.
In 2022/2023, the provisional settlement includes South Wales Police getting an extra £11.4 million in funding from the Home Office.
But much of the funding is earmarked for ‘Operation Uplift’, which is the three-year programme to deliver 20,000 additional police officers in England and Wales, and the funding is specifically for the final tranche of recruitment of new officers.
In this final stage, South Wales Police has an allocation of 181 of the 8,000 new officers, bringing a total of 450 for the three years.
Even with this additional 450, the total number of officers remains below the pre-austerity level, the report said.
It also said the government has not yet indicated that it will fund refresh costs or other inevitable increases related to Operation Uplift.
To help mitigate this risk, £10.3 million is included in the 2022/23 budget for uplift, to include salaries, capital and other infrastructure costs.
Once the allowance for the increased employer’s National Insurance
contributions is excluded from the total grant, it is a flat-cash settlement, and is the twelfth consecutive year of a real-terms cut in grant funding from the government, the report said.
It added the analysis shows that the provisional settlement, after allowing for inflation, both pay and non pay, plus pension increases, provides no additional resource for growth, and leaves a ‘gap’ in government funding of £11.7 million.
In order to achieve a balanced budget for the year, this gap will need to be fully addressed by a combination of precept increase and savings.
Capital funding to commissioners has now stopped completely meaning the capital programme now needs to be funded by revenue.
South Wales Police used to receive £3m a year in capital funding until 2010, since when it has been reduced year-on-year.
In 2021/22, the force received £300,000 in capital funding which has now been reduced to zero.
The proposals will go before the South Wales Police and Crime Panel on Thursday, February 3.
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