Home Office response imminent to judicial review launched by Police and Crime Commissioner

Lincolnshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Marc Jones has said that he is due to hear next week how the Home Office will respond to him issuing judicial review proceedings against it over police funding.

Conservative Mr Jones launched legal action in April - while the Conservatives were still in power nationally - over the funding formula, which he said uses obsolete population statistics from 2013 and outdated metrics like the number of pubs per square mile.

In a letter sent then to the Home Office, he stated: “The formula relies entirely on historical allocations and data sets, failing (either adequately or at all) to account for contemporary police needs, demographic shifts and evolving crime patterns.

“Not only has the data used for the current iterations not been updated in over 10 years, the factors for allocation themselves have not been refreshed.

“Consequently, Lincolnshire Police Force is operating under a funding model that is unfair, ineffective and ill-suited to address the challenges they face in maintaining public safety and security.”

He put the cost of a judicial review at between £20-50,000.

In remarks reported by the BBC last week and confirmed to Local Government Lawyer, Mr Jones said: “The reality is, over the next few years, the gap is just too big.

“If nothing changes, it will lead to a radical shift in the way policing is delivered in Lincolnshire.”

A spokesman for the Commissioner said Lincolnshire’s police budget this year had a £75.8m grant from the Home Office, £74.8m from council tax and some £6m in other grants, which put it at or near the bottom of the table for police funding.

Mark Smulian