DEVON and Cornwall Police and Crime Crime Commissioner Tony Hogg on Tuesday, November 3, told the House of Commons’ Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) why the Government’s proposed police funding formula is unfair, and particularly disadvantageous to Devon and Cornwall.

Mr Hogg has campaigned hard against the funding formula changes, which it is believed will cut funding to Devon and Cornwall by an extra £14 million.

Combined with current estimates of the likely impact of comprehensive spending review (CSR), it means that the local force will have to make total cuts of £54 million by 2019/20.

Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer has now revealed that it could mean the loss of 760 officers and all of his 360 police community support officers (PCSOs).

Last month Mr Hogg delivered an 8,600+ signatures public petition to Downing Street demanding that the police funding formula is amended.

Mr Hogg was one of three police and crime commissioners who gave evidence to the Tuesday afternoon HASC, chaired by Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP. Chief constables from Lancashire, Leicestershire and Surrey also attended.

The full scale of the enormous cuts facing Devon and Cornwall will be finalised before the end of the year when the Chancellor George Osborne confirms his renewed CSR targets in the Autumn statement.

The planning assumptions used by Mr Hogg’s office to calculate the likely impact of £54million, are at the lower end of expectations – based upon a CSR savings requirement to policing budgets of 25 per cent not 40 per cent.

Mr Hogg is about to begin a wide scale public consultation across Devon and Cornwall to gauge the public’s willingness to pay more through their council tax police precept to protect some of police services that will be lost if the cuts take full effect.

Mr Hogg is also named as one of six UK Police and Crime Commissioners across the country who is threatening the Home Office with legal action against policing cuts, although he told the Select Committee that discussion about this was “at an early stage”.

Alex White, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary spokesperson for Central Devon this week accused Mel Stride, the MP for Central Devon, from failing to attend meetings with Mr Hogg to discuss policing issues and said it was “a terrible indictment of our MP”.

Mr Stride’s office firmly refuted the claims saying that he has met with Mr Hogg at Westminster and just a fortnight ago tried to arrange a meeting with him locally in Devon but was told that Mr Hogg was “unavailable”.

Alan Quick