The Police Federation claim that an exercise at the four Welsh political conferences involving bags of chocolate coins shows that funding for police community support officers is low on political parties’ list of priorities:
Each of the bags represented a separate policing priority: 999 response; local police stations; counter terrorism; police training and equipment; administration support; PCSOs and police officer numbers.
But delegates, which the Police Federation said included Assembly Members, MPs and government ministers, were only allowed to choose four.
Steve Williams, a detective for 27 years and now the organisation’s secretary for Wales, said if they took up the option to take a fifth bag, they were asked to lift up a policeman’s helmet and take whatever was underneath, which was a bag of coins labelled taxation.
He said the simple game had been an “eye opener” as delegates were practically unanimous in their support for frontline policing – 999 response, police officer numbers, equipment and training and counter terrorism.
But PCSOs were only either the fifth selected item or not selected at all.
Given the past ambivalence of the Police Federation to PCSOs one would have thought that such a result would not give them much cause for concern, especially as the exercise itself was completely uinscientific and offered an unsophisticated black and white picture of the budget choices faced by Chief Constables.
What is disturbing however is the news in the same article that ring-fenced Home Office funding for the PCSOs is due to end next March. After this the money will be absorbed into the general police grant leaving it up to chief constables as to whether they continue to invest in PCSOs or divert funding to the recruitment of more police officers.
It is likely that the very valuable PCSOs will continue to patrol our streets after this date but their future will be far from safe in the face of public spending cuts and I suspect that the continuance of many posts will depend on other public bodies putting in funding for them.
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