POLICE numbers in Merseyside are set to drop by 240 this year after the force agreed a recruitment freeze until at least April.
The police authority last week decided to put a ban on new recruits until the end of the 2010-11 financial year.
The move came as all police forces faced having to make sweeping cuts. They expect to see their budgets slashed by the coalition government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, due to be announced in October.
Merseyside police expect to face a cut of around 25% over the next four years and with the majority of their budget being spent on manpower, it is inevitable officer numbers will fall.
From April to June this year, about 60 officers have left the force and not been replaced. If that situation was replicated across the year, by next April there will be 240 fewer officers on the streets.
If the cuts continued for the following four years, the minimum tenure of the new government, Merseyside would be almost 1,000 officers down by 2015.
Since 2004, the police authority, which holds the force’s purse strings, has saved as much as it could to increase the number of frontline officers to 4,562.
Now it faces the process of having to undo that work.
The reduction in officers to make the necessary savings will be made through “natural wastage”.
Paul Johnson, treasurer of the police authority, said: “The cuts the home office told us to make for this year were bigger than we expected, but our priority is and always has been to protect the front line. as much as possible. We believe the savings we need to make, which amount to around £4.1m this financial year alone, can be made through natural wastage. These are tough times.”
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