Sixty police posts go in budget cuts

Also being cut are 14.5 police staff posts, bringing a total of £5.9 million in savings.

The force is facing a funding gap of £6.3 million in the 2011/12 financial year, and is now looking at ways it can save the remaining £400,000.

A report on the cuts says the “difficult decisions” the force is having to make in light of its budget decrease “could impact on performance and public confidence”.

But a spokesman for the Bedfordshire Police Authority, which monitors the budget and sets priorities and targets, said the force’s top priority was to “maintain the services that matter most to local people”.

Collaboration with neighbouring forces in Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, cutting unnecessary expenditure and an ‘efficiency’ programme are all also being used to cut spending.

Reductions in funding mean the Beds Police has to cut spending by £19 million over the next four years, partly due to its government grant being cut by five per cent.

The force is currently advertising for a deputy chief constable, a job that comes with a salary of £109,782, a relocation allowance of £47,000, a car allowance of £8,000 and a housing/rent allowance of up to £5,270.

Changes on the way at as part of the efficiency programme include changing the current two Luton and county ‘divisions’ to three ‘local policing districts’ for Luton, Bedford and Central Bedfordshire.

More matters will be dealt with over the telephone to reduce the demand on officer time, and incident reponse teams that currently cover individual types of crime will be turned into one county-wide response team.

No decisions had yet been made as to which departments the cuts to police staff would be made in.