Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of police forces whose reserves are below the National Audit Office recommended level; and if she will make a statement.

The National Audit Office do not set a recommended level of reserves for police forces. The level of reserves is a matter for individual Police and Crime Commissioners, who have a legal duty to set balanced annual budgets and ensure they have adequate reserves.

The latest available audited financial statements from March 2016 showed that PCCs held around £1.8bn in resource reserves (up from £1.4bn in 2011) and every PCC held the equivalent of at least 6% of their annual direct resource funding in reserves.