{"id":4688,"date":"2025-11-06T13:20:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T13:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4688"},"modified":"2026-04-09T13:18:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T13:18:25","slug":"meeting-with-the-police-and-crime-commissioner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4688","title":{"rendered":"Police and Crime Commissioner"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

Police and Crime Commissioner Briefing<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n

This week, ahead of the budget, I attended a joint briefing with\u00a0the Police and Crime Commissioner\u00a0to hear urgent financial forecasts for Essex County Fire and Rescue Service and Essex Police.<\/p>\n\n

Essex County Fire and Rescue face a modelled 13.7% grant reduction (approximately \u00a35.1 million) \u2014 the equivalent of around 100 firefighters \u2014 while its Medium-Term Financial Strategy already projects a \u00a34.9 million deficit over the next three years. Demand on the Service has risen 17% in five years due to population growth, climate-related risks and the need to protect key infrastructure and 350 miles of coastline.<\/p>\n\n

Essex Police has delivered over \u00a310 million of cashable savings this year but still faces significant shortfalls. Current forecasts show a \u00a37 million shortfall for 2026\/27 and cumulative gaps of \u00a339.4 million across the next four years, depending on the final police funding settlement.<\/p>\n\n

The key levers to close these gaps are: support for the PFCC\u2019s \u00a314 policing precept proposal; front-loading core grant allocations into 2026\/27; and allocating one-off Home Office pay funding by officer headcount rather than the current formula. For the fire service the priorities are protecting real-terms grant funding, restoring dedicated capital grants, and ensuring risk-based allocations that reflect Essex\u2019s national resilience role. Both services also ask for multi-year settlements to allow proper strategic planning.<\/p>\n\n

I will be pressing Ministers for a fair and sustainable settlement and will update constituents as discussions progress.<\/p>\n\n

Sir John is pictured with Rick Hylton, Chief Fire Officer, and Roger Hirst, Essex Police Fire and Crime Commissioner<\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update following briefing with Essex Police and Fire leaders ahead of the Budget, highlighting funding pressures, rising demand and the need for a fair, sustainable settlement to protect frontline services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-westminster-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688","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=4688"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5988,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688\/revisions\/5988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}