Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she received the latest estimates of Police financial reserves from Police and Crime Commissioner Treasurers.

Police and Crime Commissioners had a statutory obligation to publish audited statements of accounts for the financial year 2016-17 by 30 September 2017.

These showed that at 31 March 2017, Police and Crime Commissioners held £1.7bn in usable resource reserves. Total resource reserves remain higher than the £1.4bn held in 2011.

The exact level of reserves is a matter for individual Police and Crime Com-missioners, who have a legal duty to set balanced annual budgets and ensure they have adequate reserves.

Usable reserve levels that have built up over time must form a key part of a force’s plans to reform to meet changing demands.