Councillors condemn Police Community Support Officer cuts
The number of Police Community Support Officers has fallen by 20% since 2021 across North Yorkshire. Analysis of new Home Office statistics from the House of Commons Library has shown the drastic cuts to PCSOs over just a year in North Yorkshire.
A total of 190 full-time equivalent PCSOs were employed in North Yorkshire as of September 2022. This is in stark contrast to the 240 that were employed in 2021. The current numbers are also lower compared to 2015, when 196 full-time equivalent PCSOs worked across the region.
As part of this year’s Police Precept Proposal, the North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner is proposing to pause PCSO recruitment until March 2024. Councillors challenged this at a meeting of the North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Panel earlier this week (6th February), with the Commissioner citing issues with recruitment and changing workforce needs, whilst also committing to engage with communities to be able to respond to their community policing needs.
Liberal Democrat Councillors are calling for a return to proper community policing and have accused the Conservative Government of letting communities down, including in York and North Yorkshire, by taking Police Community Support Officers off the streets through years of underfunding public services.
Following resident concerns about rise in anti-social behaviour since the pandemic, Lib Dems councillors have been working hard in their communities bringing together organisations to tackle crime and seeking resident views through local surveys on the issue. As part of 2023/24 budget, York Lib Dems are also proposing to directly invest £150k to improve community safety, tackling anti social behaviour hotspots, including through funding of extra specialist youth support workers.
Councillor Keith Aspden, Council Leader and Vice-Chair of the North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Panel, commented:
“These figures prove that Conservative Ministers are yet again letting our communities down. Communities in York value the links they have with their local neighbourhood policing teams and if the police continue to sustain significant underinvestment, it will be our local police teams that suffer. Plugging these funding gaps with council tax is not a sustainable or fair way to address this.
“Police Community Support Officers play a vital role in keeping our communities safe. The Government should be empowering them to do their job, not risking the slashing of their numbers, putting more pressure on stretched local council budgets to plug the gaps in community safety. I have concerns about this fall in numbers of PCSOs and I will continue to raise the issue with the North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner and Government Ministers. We must return to proper community policing, where officers are visible, trusted and known personally to local people.
“We know that residents are concerned about crime and anti-social behaviour, so we will work to bring together funding and partners to address the issue. However, chronic underinvestment in our Police and Fire forces make the task far more complex and forces us to use overstretched local budgets to fill the gaps in Government inaction.”