Police funding announced in Spending Review

The Chancellor has delivered his Spending Round to Parliament, including funding to help recruit more police officers.

The Spending Round sets out departmental spending plans for 2020-2021 to deliver on the public’s priorities, including health, education, and security. Departmental day-to-day spending is paid for through resource budgets which covers things like schools and hospitals’ running costs, and public sector pay.

Chancellor Sajid Javid says that there will be a 6.3 per cent increase in real-terms Home Office spending – representing £750 million - to fund the first year of the government’s plan to recruit 20,000 new police officers. Additionally, there will be an extra £45 million to ensure that recruitment can start immediately, getting 2,000 officers in place by end of March.

Javid also announced a 5 per cent real-terms increase in resources budget for the Ministry of Justice as well as confirming the extra £80 million for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). To protect religious and minority communities, the Chancellor emphasised that he will double a fund to protect places of worship.

The Spending Review also included an extra £2.2 billion for defence next year, a real-terms increase of 2.6 per cent, ensuring that defence spending not only stays above the Nato target level of two per cent of GDP but increases its share from the existing 2.1 per cent.

Additionally, £7 million of funding will be made available for the Normandy Memorial Trust and confirms funding for the new Office for Veterans’ Affairs, previously announced at £5 million.