POLICE in Cambridgeshire are to receive additional funding after a special plea to the Home Office by Chief Constable, Julie Spence. The Home Office has said Cambridgeshire Police Authority will receive three per cent extra funding for the 2008/09 financial

POLICE in Cambridgeshire are to receive additional funding after a special plea to the Home Office by Chief Constable, Julie Spence.

The Home Office has said Cambridgeshire Police Authority will receive three per cent extra funding for the 2008/09 financial year, and similar increases for the following two financial years.

Keith Walters, chairman of Cambridgeshire Police Authority, said: "It is too early to say exactly what this will mean for the funding of policing in the county as it will take some time before we are able to see exactly what the settlement means for us.

"My initial reaction is that there seems to have been a genuine effort at finding a balance and Cambridgeshire has fared very slightly better than expected.

"It amounts to an extra £300,000 above what we had planned for. This is only one part of the budget jigsaw and is about one fifth of one per cent of our net spending. There will now follow a period during which the authority and constabulary will calculate exactly what it means. However I would like to emphasise that we are under no illusions that the settlement is still likely to leave us needing to take some tough decisions."

Mr Walters added: "Although this authority has received a provisional settlement which is better than the average (2.7 per cent), Cambridgeshire still remains one of the lowest funded forces per head of population in the country and we will be interested to see whether this year's settlement has changed that position, especially in the light of the well documented additional pressures associated with our population growth."

Mrs Spence said: "We need to look at detailed implications. The initial figure suggests a more generous settlement than we anticipated, but we won't know until we analyse the detail exactly what this will mean. It reinforces the importance of our campaign and the fact that we have been able to put our case directly to ministers and officials.

“I've made it clear that we will focus all our efforts on continuing to improve our service, but we continue to face pressure and as each year goes by and Cambridgeshire grows, we will continue to lag behind in officer numbers unless the funding improves.”