Austerity leaves Northumbria 1500 cops down, yet Tories can’t support change?

 

Over the last decade £100m has been removed from the annual budget of Northumbria Police. enough to employ an additional 1500 officers and equip them very well indeed.

Northumbria, a force managing some of the most diverse areas in UK Policing, with two major cities massive urban patches, huge rural areas, three very busy ports, and a great number of minor ones, thousands of miles of highway, a very long border with a nation being policed under different laws and vast patches of deprived areas along with two of the wealthiest villages in the UK, Darras Hall and Cleadon sitting in their patch.

The police and both Crime Commissioners over this time period have managed their diminishing budgets very well indeed but the latest cuts from the scissors of Priti Patel has caused uproar among Northumberland’s Tory splinter group members.

To manage the latest sets of cuts the Police have decided that they must concentrate their resources on policing crime on the ground and rely on initial contact with the public through their call centres.

The latest televised County Council meetings and open comments on social media has thrown up opposition to the PCC and Police agreed plan for 2022/23 to close face to face contact at police stations so that funds can be released for front line activity from none other than loyal to the Tory internal opposition and splinter group member, Ex-cop and regular litter picker (doing Council workers out of a job) Councillor Gordon Stewart of Prudhoe, who apparently doesn’t want to hear about his own Governments failings to fund the police correctly and is set against the closure of more face to face contact with the Police.

Following this enforced change for Northumbria Police we at murky now feel we know, or is it allegedly suspect?, ‘that may be a Police term’ why this Councillor was an early out during previous enforced cuts or was he a volunteer to ensure his redundancy lump sum was maximised?