2 weeks Ago
I don’t know whether it’s my poor planning or just fate, but this time of year seems to be when my inbox and door mat are collectively cluttered with polite but non-negotiable missives telling me that my bills are about to increase. For me that ranges from insurance, income tax and mobile phone to broadband and the like. I have come to accept these rises as shruggingly as I do that night follows day.
Fleetingly, these do trigger a pledge to explore what I can do to economise, and sometimes I do. One bill, however, which has no such flexibility, is the council tax notice and to many it’s the one that provokes the most outrage. However, to me it is the most important.
I live in a Band E property in Mid Sussex and my bill, which came through last week, tells me that I must pay an additional 4.5 per cent, or £124 this year. That is split between the county, district and parish councils, and the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC).
READ MORE: Decision due on next stage of major 700-home housing scheme To put this into perspective, the consumer price index to January 2025 was 3.9 per cent. If this was the percentage increase, my bill would have risen by £107.
I am passionate about public services and understand that it’s easy to be critical about what they deliver, to what standard and whether they are there when we need (or think we need) them. Whatever our views, most of us care deeply about providing for older people and those who need support outside of hospital. Who too doesn’t demand our children and most vulnerable residents are safeguarded? Which driver among us hasn’t rued the state of the roads, and how angry do people get when their bins aren’t emptied or our public spaces aren’t maintained? Then comes the service you desperately hope you’ll never need, but if you do, you really do.
The PCC has responsibility for the police budget, which comprises a combination of central government grants and money from the local police precept; funds raised from council tax. There is a cap on how much councils and the PCC can increase the precept by without triggering a referendum. This year, the Sussex PCC, Katy Bourne OBE, has decided that increase should be 5.
5 per cent, or £14 on a Band D property per annum, or £17.11 for my band E. Of the forty two police forces (excluding the City of London), over the last ten years Sussex Police is thirty-second in overall funding per capita (£210 in the last financial year) while our neighbours Surrey are fourteenth (£236), Hampshire twenty-seventh (£211) and Kent twenty-ninth (also £211 in the rounded figures).
The England and Wales average policing spend per capita is £251, hugely skewed by the Met Police’s £378. Whilst Sussex is, on any view, the poor relation on these per capita figures, they only tell part of the story. With a population of over 1.
5 million, the draw on public services is disproportionally greater through the estimated 11 million visitors to Brighton per year, plus those who pass through the area to fly out of Gatwick Airport and to attend and visit the plethora of events and attractions that make Sussex as popular, and vibrant, as it is. Other areas have demands too, but Sussex punches above its weight and someone must bear the cost. Of course we should hold our public services to account and demand efficiency.
But we must also recognise that, with the current model, local funding plugs a gap from that provided by central government which itself comes with caveats and constraints. Even with modest increases in the various precepts, swingeing spending reductions are still being made; West Sussex had to find £12.3m of efficiencies to balance its budget; East Sussex, £13.
5m (plus using £12m of their reserves) and Brighton and Hove’s budget gap is £16m. The PCC is faced with £5m of savings to find. With so much central government funding ring-fenced and packaged in headline-grabbing wrapping paper such as the increase in neighbourhood policing which, according to the National Police Chief’s Council, leave ‘forces unable to invest in other specialist areas of policing that are critical to our service’, we should understand the struggle our local leaders have on delivering even the basics and turn our ire on Westminster who hold the bigger purse strings.
Former Brighton and Hove police chief Graham Bartlett’s Brighton-based Jo Howe crime novel series continues with City on Fire which is now available in paperback..
