Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the (a) adequacy and (b) equity of the police allocation formula for Bedfordshire.

The government recognises that the current police funding formula is out of date and no longer accurately reflects demand on policing.

A review of the funding formula is underway to ensure that it fairly and transparently distributes the circa £8.6bn of annual core grant funding across the 43 police forces in England and Wales, including Bedfordshire.

We are working towards completing the first phase of the review and are considering the demands facing each police force and the relative impact of local factors on forces. We have engaged closely with the policing sector throughout the review, and this work continues.