Hampshire chief constable Olivia Pinkney asks for £15 council tax increase to 'take the fight' to criminals

Olivia Pinkney, who has led Hampshire Constabulary for nearly five years, is today making a case for taxpayers to contribute around £15 a year extra to police in council tax.

Mrs Pinkney has said the levy means that recruiting and training 146 officers in 2021/22 - including seven in the regional organised crime unit - would not come at the cost of cutting any of the force’s 228 PCSOs.

Funding for those officers was due as part of the second phase of Home Office’s uplift programme, but the extra money would also mean another 50 could be recruited early from the third phase. Another 16 are being brought in to tackle organised crime.

In taking the unusual step and outlining publicly her recommendation, Mrs Pinkney has said bolstering the force will give them the capability to ‘arrest an extra 300’ of the most dangerous criminals operating county lines drugs gangs.

She said it would give the force the potential to investigate 26,000 more crimes - signalling a return to more probing of ‘neighbourhood crime’ that past austerity-driven cutbacks had hindered.

Prevention work could cut 1,000 crimes a year, and the cash could help safeguard 12,000 vulnerable people, including 240 more high-risk children, she says.

Cash would be pumped into making sure the police can stay on top of the courts backlog - some 200 crown court trials and 2,500 magistrates cases. Mrs Pinkney said this needed significant resourcing.

Asked if the cash boost would see more officers in Portsmouth, Mrs Pinkney told The News: ‘Absolutely.’

Officers being funded by the Home Office 20,000 nationwide uplift are already in the city, and Mrs Pinkney was on patrol with them in December.

‘They’re coming through and they’re keeping Portsmouth safer,’ she said - and added local teams are ‘a really important part of the jigsaw’.

This boost would see police ‘ramp up’ the pressure on drug dealers bringing misery to Portsmouth, Mrs Pinkney said.

She added: ‘I’ve been a chief officer for a long old time and this opportunity to ramp up, and take the fight to the criminals is something I’ve not been able to do at this level before.’

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But it would also allow her teams to once again look at neighbourhood crime in a way that has not been possible for years.

‘I want to investigate more neighbourhood crime,’ she said. ‘We’ve always investigated the most high harm and the most serious and we always will.

‘But I know there’s been a gap around what people would like me to investigate and what I could do - this will help close that gap. It won’t eliminate it, but it will help close it.’

Funding for Hampshire Constabulary comes from a Home Office grant, and the police share of council tax.

The grant is worked out using a much-maligned funding formula, taking into account factors including population size and number of licensed premises.

Inspectors at the police watchdog say that formula leaves Hampshire underfunded by about £43.5m compared to other forces.

The Home Office has said funding for Hampshire is set to increase by £21m in 2021/22, bringing total funding up to £387m for the year. This however includes the £15 a year - for a band D property - council tax precept increase.

Now for the first time, Mrs Pinkney has handed police and crime commissioner Michael Lane an operational recommendation as he sets out his budget plan.

In that recommendation, Mrs Pinkney is backing a £15 precept rise and said she is doing so in the ‘face of a growth in serious violence and uncertainty’.

Mr Lane, an elected politician, must take his proposals to the Hampshire Police and Crime Panel where councillors from the county’s cities and boroughs will vote on them.

Asked about putting a cost burden on taxpayers in the pandemic, Mrs Pinkney told The News she was not backing the rise lightly and she knew ‘people are worried economically’ in the pandemic but that she was ‘struck’ by support.

A survey found 66.1 per cent of the 8,348 participants backed the increase - but that increased to 71.48 per cent in Portsmouth.

Extra funding will bring in new officers sooner, Mrs Pinkney said.

‘The sooner we’ve got them in the sooner they can be out and about helping the people of Portsmouth be safer.’

In a statement she added: ‘I do not make this operational case lightly and I am fully conscious that many people and businesses face economic difficulties.

‘The simple truth is despite Hampshire’s officers being rated as some of the most productive in the whole country I am not currently in a position to be able to investigate as many crimes as I would want to as your chief constable.

‘This will help to move us to a position where we have the opportunity to take the fight more and more to those criminals who blight our community.

‘Anything other than a £15 per year increase flies in the face of the operational evidence of what we need to deliver safer communities.’

Marine unit set for investment

Levying the council tax rise will ‘reduce crime,’ – and see investment in the force’s marine unit, the police commissioner said.

Hampshire’s Michael Lane, who will soon have served an extra year in office after last year’s election was postponed, said boosting the precept is the ‘only option’.

Mr Lane’s office said the £10m raised through council tax would see ‘further investment in the marine unit’ – a team once set to be cut. It will also fund Taser weapons and body armour.

He said: ‘I promised on day one I would do all I could to make people safer from the first day to the last day that I have the privilege and responsibility of holding this role.

‘With the significant support I have received from local residents and the compelling operational case from the chief constable that crime would be reduced, I firmly believe the police precept increase will keep local residents and our communities safer delivering to the promises I have made and is the only option.

‘I therefore intend to raise the policing precept by £15 per annum this year.

‘I will present my intention and supporting argument to the Police and Crime Panel in the hope that the panel find it as compelling as I do and agree it is a right decision and give the support for this increase to keep all of our local residents and communities safer.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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