Police 'defying gravity' in face of funding cuts, warns outgoing West Midlands chief
The outgoing chief of West Midlands Police said he has spent his career trying to "defy gravity" over funding constraints.
Sir David Thompson said his force was more than £100million short of the budget needed to deal with mounting challenges including violence, fraud and vulnerable people.
And he warned ministers of the devastating impact of any further spending cuts on the force.
Sir David is retiring next month after 12 years with the force, the last six of which he has spent as chief constable.
In an interview with the Express & Star he also addressed his frustration at WMP's failure to bring anyone to justice for the Birmingham pub bombings. He hit out at "warped" statistics making crime look worse than it was and said officers were being hindered in doing their jobs by an avalanche of petty bureaucracy.
The 53-year-old said funding had been the "biggest overriding challenge" for WMP since he joined as deputy from Greater Manchester Police in 2010.
"Between 2010 and 2019 the force's budget dropped by a quarter and we lost one in four police officers," he said.
"In that time the funding arrangements for policing have not changed and they work really badly in this region for us as a force.
"The force has had to try and defy gravity. At the same time as the money has got less the mission of policing has got bigger and bigger.
"We're expected to deal with more fraud, we've got bigger challenges with violence and vulnerable people. It is incredibly challenging."
Sir David said the force had the lowest council tax base in the country, meaning "people are paying a lot less for policing here than they are anywhere else".
He referenced a recent Institute for Fiscal Studies report, which showed WMP was the poorest funded police force against policing need in the country.
"This was by quite a long way," he said. If you look at Manchester, we have more under 25s and bigger levels of deprivation, yet we have £30million a year less to police with.
"If we were funded at the same level as Merseyside we'd have £120million more to spend. That's the sort of level we should be at.
"My worry is going forward for the force, in a time where public spending could tighten, if this happens in the way it has in the past it will really impact WMP.
"The funding formula needs resolving, and at the very least we can't implement reductions in public spending in the way we have in the last 10 years.
"Coupled with the lower amount coming through from local taxation it's like a double whammy for WMP.
"We are fighting crime with less police officers than Cumbria has per head of population.
"This ain't Cumbria. It is a challenging part of the country and the money is nowhere near sufficient to do all the things well."
Sir David, who has been a copper for 30 years, said that although violence was a key concern of his there was a danger that the public was being unduly scared by statistics.
"I have a real worry that the data on violent crime is very misleading," he said. "A lot of it is actually less serious, and the actual serious end of violent crimes committed is relatively small.
"The way we record crime is too complicated. If I'm honest I think the force is over-recording some categories of crime and forces like London are under-recording. The data is very messy."
He said the situation was placing an unnecessary burden on officers, who were suffering because the job was being made "more complicated than it needs to be".
"We're asking a huge amount from them," Sir David said. "Too much time is wasted on recording minor crimes and bureaucracy. "In the past as a young cop on the streets, I'd have told people to behave and that if I had to come back they'd get arrested.
"We wouldn't have spent the time filling in the forms. You could take a lot of stress away from policing by simplifying some of this."
Sir David said he was proud of the achievements of his force, particularly in how it had "rose to the challenge" of the Commonwealth Games and was "way ahead" of many other organisations in terms of inclusivity and ethics.
We are not a perfect organisation but I think we've led the way on that work," he said. "The internal culture has improved greatly in the time I have been here, although there is still more work to be done."
He said that while he had "no regrets" there were some investigations that still left him with a sense of frustration.
Sir David said: "There is always a lot of criticism about West Midlands Police about the pub bombings and of course there were some huge failings in our past.
"That investigation continues, but I'd really like us to have been able to bring somebody to justice for that, because it is a huge gap in the force's past."
He also defended his controversial decision to sign off on the closure of dozens of police stations and buildings across the region, saying he was leaving WMP with some of the best facilities of anywhere in the country.
"We have invested in modern buildings, new custody blocks and control facilities," he said. "I don't regret the ones that have gone. Many were in an awful state of repair and were not good places for staff to work from."
Sir David, who received a knighthood in 2021 for services to policing, is due to hand over the reins to former Nottinghamshire Police chief Craig Guildford.
He said that overall WMP was "in a good place" and was "heading in the right direction". He spoke of the love he has developed for the West Midlands – where he will continue to serve as a deputy lieutenant – and described his role as "the best chief constables job in the country".
"You always want to leave the job to your successor in a nice, tidy way, but policing is not like that," Sir David said. "It is time for fresh eyes and with that comes fresh vision and new ideas.
"My successor will be a great chief. He has got plenty of work to do still, but looking back there is nothing I would have done differently."
