Council tax rise agreed to fund South Yorkshire Police

Each year, the Police and Crime Commissioner sets the police precept which is the element of local council tax payments which funds policing.

The county’s Police and Crime Commissioner Dr Alan Billings told today’s meeting of the police and crime panel he intends to take up the government’s maximum allowed increase in the police council tax precept of 6.73 per cent.

Residents in a Band D property will pay an extra £15 per year to fund policing in South Yorkshire.

Around 37 per cent of the force’s funding will come from the council tax precept, which is expected to raise around £88m this year.

Dr Billings told the meeting this afternoon: “There is real pressure on this year from the Policing Minister – it’s been quite explicit this year in a way it hasn’t been in the past, that we should use the precept to the maximum. And I think most PCCs will be in that position.

“The government is itself struggling with with its own finances and is not able to give through the police grant the level of funding that would keep pace with inflation.

“We are being encouraged by the government to use maximum precept flexibility and indeed without that, as we look ahead into the medium term period, I think budgets become very unstable if we if we don’t do that.

“I think this is the only way we’re going to balance the books this year and the way in which we’re going to give a measure of stability to the finances of the force going forward into the medium term.”

South Yorkshire Police finance bosses have also had to find £6.1m in savings this year, and the force will also pay out around £5.8m this year for claims against SYP as a result of the Hillsborough football disaster and child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.

A report to the panel stated that the increase is needed to 'invest in the required infrastructure to ensure all officers are fully supported in their journey into the force', and to maintain the current levels of police officers.