DEVON’S police and crime commissioner Tony Hogg has welcomed calls for an independent panel to advise the Government on future proposals for police funding.

In November the Home Office paused its police funding review process after Devon and Cornwall Police highlighted serious errors in calculating the funding allocations for police force areas.

Devon and Cornwall Police would have been heavily affected had the spending review process continued. The force was predicting cuts of £50-million to the local policing budget and could have had to lose up to 760 officers, all 360 PCSO posts and a further 180 jobs within the organisation. Mr Hogg considered holding a referendum on a large council tax increase to help protect the police force in the two counties.

Since the government’s policing minister Mike Penning announced that the Home Office review in the police funding formulas had been abandoned in favour of a new independent survey, plans to hold such a referendum have been scrapped. The force still faces having to make huge savings, though now thought to be closer to £39-million.

A report published by the Home Affairs Select Committee says accounting firms, financial experts and the College of Policing should be appointed to assist the Home Office in formulating revised proposals in future.

It states that it was hoped ‘the assistance and advice of external experts will deliver a fair and effective funding formula’ for policing across the country.

Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP, chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: ‘The ease with which Devon and Cornwall exposed the error was almost farcical, in a modern day battle between David and Goliath.

‘Police forces found themselves on a rollercoaster, where at the stroke of a pen they saw their funding allocation plummet in some cases and rise meteorically in others, with nobody able to explain why. It would be charitable to call it a shambles.

‘Errors by senior officials in the Home Office and the process adopted were serious mistakes, which wasted time and resources and gravely damaged confidence in the Home Office in the eyes of their principal stakeholders, the police themselves.

‘The current police funding formula has become unfit for purpose, and this review was welcome. Instead of designing a process which truly engaged the police and police and crime commissioners, they were shut out, with the Home Office denying them access to data and giving them an impossibly short amount of time to submit evidence.’

In response Mr Hogg said: ‘I’m delighted and impressed with the way that the committee has worked. There is no doubt the funding formula was a shambles.

‘There was no element of the proposed formula that was fit for purpose. This has directly saved Devon and Cornwall £15-million next year alone and now my office is back to work working hard on the same issues again to ensure the next set of proposals are fairer for the people of Devon and Cornwall.’