Fahy: agencies must work more closely together

Greater Manchester’s top cop has defended controversial comments he made about Government cuts.

Speaking at a conference on sexual violence in Manchester, GMP’s Chief Constable Peter Fahy said the coalition didn’t understand the pressures police forces were under.
Mr Fahy was reported as saying that proposed cuts to the police budget could lead to a rise in deaths of vulnerable children.

His comments provoked a strong response from the Home Office but Mr Fahy said his words were taken out of context.

He added: “The coverage of what I said at the conference missed my main point. Certainly, I did not say that cuts to public spending could lead to more tragedy, but I think the public accepts that budget reductions mean we need to change the way we work and transform public services.

“My main point is that the budget reductions are an opportunity to reduce complex procedures and unnecessary bureaucracy. We need to have an intelligent debate about the cuts and see the opportunities, not just the threats.

“The structure of Whitehall is such that it often does not recognise that a lot of what we spend in Greater Manchester is on a relatively small number of repeat offenders, chaotic families or vulnerable young people.

“The separate funding regimes, performance regimes and Whitehall ministries can often work in silos. However, in Greater Manchester we are trying to break down those silos and have police officers, health professionals, social services and youth offending teams all working together as part of a joined-up approach to deal with these problems, rather than just wasting money sending response officers to deal with each incident.

“For example, a lot of police hours and cost are spent responding to calls to a number of chaotic families. If we can integrate the way we work with other public bodies, and work cleverer with more imagination then we can achieve a lot more with the money available.

“It is frustrating the political and media debate has concentrated too much on what are the threats of the spending cuts, rather than the opportunities, and the way my speech was taken out of context underlines this.”

GMP needs to save £134 million, a quarter of its budget, by 2015, with 3,000 posts likely to go including up to 1,400 officers, over the next four years.