Value for money
This section contains links to our reports and findings on how far police forces provide value for money. From this page, you can:
- find out how police forces in England and Wales have responded to the cuts in central government funding, announced in the October 2010 spending review, by reading the reports in our Valuing the Police programme section;
- download our other reports which focus on value for money; and
- read your force’s Value for money profile.
Valuing the Police programme
In the October 2010 spending review, the government announced that central funding to the police service in England and Wales would be reduced in real terms by 20 percent in the four years from March 2011 to March 2015.
HMIC’s Valuing the Police programme has tracked how forces have planned to make savings to meet this budget requirement. We have published four reports: one in each year of the review.
Policing in Austerity: Meeting the Challenge – July 2014
This latest report is the last in the series, covering the final year of the spending review. It concerns how forces have managed the considerable challenges to make savings.
Policing in Austerity: Rising to the Challenge – July 2013
Read about how police forces were coping with the budget cuts in the third year of the spending review.
Policing in austerity: One year on – July 2012
This is the 2012 report on the progress police forces had made to face the financial challenge of the spending review, while maintaining the service they provided to the public.
Adapting to Austerity: A review of police force and authority preparedness for the 2011/12 – 14/15 CSR period – July 2011
This was the first report in the series, and provided an independent, professional assessment of how well each force had prepared for the financial challenges of the budget cuts over the coming four years.
Other reports
- In July 2013, the National Audit Office and HMIC committed to working together to produce a practical guide on procuring and managing private sector partnerships. ‘Private sector partnering in the police service’.
- Read ‘Demanding Times – The front line and police visibility’ – an HMIC report from March 2011 defining the police front line, and revealing the percentage of police available to the public.
- Download ‘Valuing the Police – Policing in an age of austerity’ – HMIC’s report from July 2010 which showed that 11 percent of the police were visibly available to the public.
Value for money profiles
HMIC gathers together data from the Home Office annual data requirement (crime and workforce data) and force satisfaction surveys, as well as Chartered Institute of Public Finance (CIPFA) annual financial returns. This information is then used to create a value for money profile for each force. All force’s profiles can be found by choosing Value for money profiles from the menu to the left. To view this data in .csv format, visit our data section.