For full details of this year's budget, please view the Budget Book below:
Budget Book 2011-12
Budget information for previous years is also available on the following links:
Budget Book 2010-11
Budget Book 2009-10
Budget Book 2008-09
2011-12 Council Tax Precept
Message from Mr Peter Thompson, Chairman
Despite the financial pressures and uncertainties as a result of the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, Durham Constabulary continues to be one of the country’s top performing police forces, as outlined in the Policing Plan for 2011-2014.
The Authority and its police force have looked at a range of bold and innovative measures aimed at cutting costs and increasing productivity. I am pleased that the resulting savings have allowed Police Authority Members to freeze the police part of the Council Tax for 2011/2012, helping to ease the financial burden for council taxpayers within County
Durham and Darlington.
Providing Value for Money
Government cuts in public sector spending over the next few years, have presented the Police Authority’s Members with some difficult choices in determining the budget for 2011/12. The Authority recognised the need to consider different ways of delivering policing services, and the scale of the funding cuts has required us to modify our approach to financial planning.
Throughout this process, the Authority’s key target has been to make the necessary savings to balance our budget, without diminishing your service delivery. One of the ways that it has achieved this target is by working with the Constabulary to establish a new model for service delivery across the Force area.
In addition, a recruitment freeze of both officer and staff posts, together with a root and branch review of non staffing budgets, has ‘bought’ the Authority the time to get our new structure in place, at the same time as minimising the necessary compulsory redundancies required to balance the budget.
Cost of Policing in 2011-12
In 2011/12 our Budget Requirement is £121.350m. Members made the decision to freeze Council Tax at last year’s levels. To achieve this, the Constabulary and Authority have identified budget savings of £10.792m.
Some Government special grant of £4.765m has been incorporated in the core government grant, whereas previously this was included as income when determining the Budget Requirement. With a zero increase in Council Tax the Authority will receive £0.727m each year for the next four years as a special Government grant, which is equivalent to raising the Band D Council Tax by 2.5 per cent.
Investing in Policing Assets
The Authority intends to spend £2.8m on police properties and £2.4m on IT, vehicles and equipment in 2011/12. This is funded by £4.3m borrowing and £0.9m in Government grants. As at 31st March 2010 the value of Police Authority assets was £67.1m and loans outstanding amounted to £0.9m.
What will this mean for your Household?
With payments staying the same as last year, for a Band D property the Council Tax rate will remain at £153.41 per year for policing.
Policing Priorities for 2011-12
Tackling anti-social behaviour:
Whilst we are recording 12.8% fewer incidents of anti-social behaviour, it still represents 30% of all police incidents. We have been working with our partners to find problem solving solutions to these issues and this has undoubtedly resulted in some of the significant reductions that we have seen over the past year. We will continue to do this and to work more closely with communities to understand and address your concerns.
Reducing the impact of drug and alcohol abuse on people and communities:
Drug and alcohol abuse can cause harm in many different ways. In terms of crime and anti-social behaviour this is often seen as low level street issues such as underage drinking or disturbances fuelled by alcohol, or stealing to feed a drug habit. If these issues are seen in our communities it can damage the confidence the public have in the ability of the police to deal with these issues and affect their quality of life.
Protecting vulnerable people from harm:
Protecting those people and communities who are at the greatest risk of harm remains a priority. This can include the elderly, vulnerable children or people at risk of domestic abuse.
These priorities will be underpinned by our commitment to you to ensure that we engage with all of our communities across County Durham and Darlington. In order to achieve these priorities working with partners, police forces and authorities within the area to jointly deliver services and achieve efficiencies and improvements.
Our strategy for delivering against these priorities will be outlined in our joint Annual Report 2010/2011 and Policing Plan 2011/2014.
Getting Involved
Community engagement and consultation remains at the heart of our business and our work is influenced by what you tell us. To find out how to get involved, please view our Have Your Say page.
for further information about your local police force, please visit durham constabulary's website.
Download our Leaflets
Our Council Tax Leaflet for 2011-12 is available if you would like to download it.
To view our previous leaflets, please go to the financial publications page.