The Chair of Cleveland Police Authority has today challenged a body claiming to represent taxpayers why ‘it criticises our decision to make sure people know about plans for delivering policing in their area yet says nothing about the Government’s plans to spend millions on an administrative upheaval for which there is no evidence of public support—and no evidence it will improve tackling crime or protecting people on their streets and in their homes.’
The challenge has come from Authority Chair Councillor Dave McLuckie who says that claims by the Taxpayers’ Alliance are ‘based on entirely unreliable information which totally misrepresent the real facts—and yet it remains totally silent on the real issues which threaten the future of our local police service.’
Figures published by the TaxPayers’ Alliance claim that in Cleveland a total of £46,820 was spent in the last financial year on publishing information to the public on force performance and plans for the coming year—but today the Authority Chair revealed that attempts to compare this with other authorities’ spending was totally misleading.
He explained “The way in which the TaxPayers’Aliiance has chosen to collate and present this information is frankly nonsensical. For example they attempt to suggest that the figure of £46,820 for Cleveland is equivalent to £10,349 for another force in the region. Yet, whilst our figure covers all costs, those from the other force relate only to the advertising costs for local council publications, many other costs are met by their local council—and the authority recognise that their production and printing costs, not included in the figure quoted by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, are considerable.
“We believe that it is perfectly proper that the public we serve should be kept properly informed which is why we produce around a quarter of million leaflets on our plans every year, why we have gained national praise for the work we have done in ensuring that we have versions of our plan specifically tailored to local areas and to young people—and why we have just been shown as having the highest level of public confidence of any force in the country.
“What is particularly odd about the TaxPayers’ Alliance claims is that, whilst they seek to create publicity over what they claim is a million pounds a year nationally spent on telling people about their local policing service, why are they so silent about that fact that many tens of millions of pounds is to be spent by the Government on the creation of Police and Crime Commissioners and Panels—in Cleveland alone it is estimated that the cost of the initial elections will be a million pounds and it has been widely reported that Commissioners will be paid £122,000 a year, not to mention the cost of the support service which will be required, both by Commissioners and Panels.
“If the TaxPayers’ Alliance was spending its efforts on highlighting those kinds of cost it would have a lot more credibility.”