{"id":4283,"date":"2025-01-31T10:37:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T10:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4283"},"modified":"2026-02-18T00:15:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T00:15:04","slug":"sir-john-whittingdale-mp-meets-with-essex-chief-constable-and-essex-police-and-crime-commissioner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4283","title":{"rendered":"Meeting with Chief Constable and Police and Crime Commissioner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sir John Whittingdale met Chief Constable of Essex Police, BJ Harrington, and Police Fire and Crime Commissioner, Roger Hirst, to discuss police funding in Essex (pictured).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sir John said: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cEssex Police is at maximum strength with 3,755 officers and offences are down by 10,000 a year. However, this year\u2019s funding from the Government even after the most recently announced increase, together with an increase in the Council Tax precept, is still not enough to cover the increased costs of the pay award to police officers and the Government\u2019s increase in National Insurance contributions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This has led the Police Commissioner and Chief Constable to propose cutting the 99 PCSOs in the county who do an important job visiting schools, attending public events and supporting the neighbourhood teams. I hope that this figure can be reduced but cuts will still have to be made. I will therefore continue to press the Government to provide the full funding to cover the additional costs and to review the national funding formula so that Essex gets a fair share of the money available.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/PFCC-Chief-Constable-31-January-2025-1-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4284\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Concerns over police funding in Essex, warning that rising costs could lead to cuts to PCSOs and urging the Government to provide fair funding and review the national formula.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4283"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5471,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4283\/revisions\/5471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}