Asked by: Kemi Badenoch (Conservative - Saffron Walden)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of allocating policing numbers in rural areas based on geographic size instead of per head of population.
Answered by Nick Hurd
Population sparsity was one factor within the existing Police Allocation Formula. We will consider the issue of the police funding formula in the context of the next Spending Review.
It is an operational decision for Chief Constables, held to account by their democratically elected Police and Crime Commissioner, to determine the size of the police workforce and how they are deployed in line with local priorities.