- Conference
- 2025 Police, Probation and CAFCASS Conference
- Date
- 17 June 2025
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes the damage that 14 years of Conservative Government austerity have inflicted on the finances of police forces in England and Wales. In January 2024 the National Police Chiefs’ Council revealed that 6,000 police officers are backfilling police staff roles due to underfunding and the officer uplift targets.
UNISON’s own research, analysing individual police force budget documents, shows that England and Wales territorial police forces face a total budget shortfall of just under £1 billion by 2027. Some of the worst affected are a £38.8 million gap for Essex, £35 million for Avon and Somerset, £29.3 million for Kent and £27.9 million for Greater Manchester.
Conference also notes that rising numbers of reported crimes, the increasing complexity of many crimes and the government’s early prisoner release schemes are placing further pressures on policing that need to be met with sufficient funding.
Finally, conference notes that despite calls from NPCC, HMIC and UNISON for police officer uplift targets to be relaxed, these have been maintained by the present government. As a result local policing leaders are being forced to reduce police staff jobs in order to balance budgets whilst maintaining an arbitrary officer uplift target. UNISON branches are reporting redundancies, voluntary severance, maintained vacancies and reduced establishments for police staff roles.
Whilst Conference welcomes the government’s funding to rebuild neighbourhood policing in England and Wales it is concerned by reports that instead of building neighbourhood policing around PCSOs, local leaders are instead, to balance budgets and meet officer uplift targets, placing mostly police officers into these teams. This will lead to less effective or visible policing and mean smaller teams of expensive police officers.
Conference calls upon the Service Group Executive, working with the England and Wales Police Sector Committee and UNISON Labour Link where appropriate, to:
1. Increase public campaigning and lobbying of government for adequate funding of the police service, highlighting the importance of police staff to public safety and the impacts of police staff job losses.
2. Increase public campaigning and lobbying of government for the ending of the police officer uplift targets, highlighting the damage they do to policing, officer backfilling of staff roles and the waste of precious public funds this represents.
3. Campaign to promote the role of PCSOs in policing and to their importance in achieving the governments ambitions to rebuild effective and visible neighbourhood policing.