People across Devon will be asked to pay more to help fund their police. A 4.95 per cent increase in the police element of council tax which equates to around the cost of a Pot Noodle a month for an average household has been unanimously supported.

Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Panel agreed the rise of £12.96 a year which will mean an annual cost to a Band property of £274.50 for police services. Police and crime commissioner Alison Hernandez, who has raised tax by just over £100 a year since she came to office in 2016, said this income from taxpayers combined with an increase in the central government grant and savings of £5.4 million, would allow officer numbers to be maintained at 3,610, the highest ever in the force, and improve public contact.

The commissioner said she had focused on the things the public told her mattered, like high numbers of visible police and investment in communities by reopening more front enquiry desks at police stations which were closed in the austerity years after 2010. However, are we getting value for money?

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In a leader column in our sister print titles the Express and Echo and Herald Express, the editor writes that the latest rise is astonishing and completely disproportionate to the harsh economic climate we find ourselves in – and have been for some years. Especially as the public’s confidence in the force is falling.

Read the full leader column below

Few will argue about the need for more police on the streets to keep us all safe and more effort to reduce the levels of crime.

We report frequently in this newspaper about crime, some low-level – shoplifting, anti-social behaviour and the like – but we also hear of more serious offences like assault and, far too frequently, murder.

Thankfully we live in a region where crime is comparatively low but we still depend on the police to keep our streets safe and to apprehend those that break the law so they can be dealt with by the justice system.

But who pays for all that? We do, through our taxes. But are we getting value for money for a service that has continued to take more than its fair share from us over the years?

We are at that time of year where everyone, our councils, service providers from utilities to insurers, all have their hands out, demanding we hand over even more of our ever-diminishing pay packets or pensions.

Savvy shoppers will know there are some things you can do to stem the tide of price rises – switch to a cheaper provider or voluntarily stop certain services. But you can’t do that with policing, with a demand for more money from the region’s police and crime commissioner (PCC), who sets the amount we pay for policing on our council tax bill.

Commissioner Alison Hernandez’s proposal to raise the police precept by 4.95% for 2024-25 was approved by members of the police and crime panel, a body that should hold the PCC to account, in much the same way the PCC holds power over the chief constable responsible for day-to-day policing.

This latest increase will see the police portion of a Band D council tax bill rise to £274.50 which is £101.66 more – or 58% higher – than when Ms Hernandez was elected to her role in May 2016.

That rise is astonishing and completely disproportionate to the harsh economic climate we find ourselves in – and have been for some years.

Ms Hernandez, a political appointee, has ploughed ahead with her agenda, arguing that the council tax precept, when added to the grant from national Government, goes in part to paying for more police officers following years of austerity – cuts inflicted by her own party – and to fund her campaign to reopen police stations in towns across the two counties, services she says most of us want.

But while residents deserve better services, it is becoming ever more apparent in the eyes of the public that all this cash going to policing is not providing value for money and increasingly less so.

Yet the panel maintaining oversight of the police budget appears oblivious to these concerns. Papers presented to the crime panel included the results of a survey of almost 2,500 people which was carried out between November 24, 2023, and January 2, 2024.

The report said: “The percentage of respondents who thought the current Devon and Cornwall Police precept level represented value for money has dropped from 40% in 2022-23 to 26% in 2023-24.”

That decline was also mirrored in the public’s confidence in the force as a whole with 47% of respondents “not that confident” or “not confident at all” in police efforts.

There have been letters to this newspaper from disgruntled bay residents complaining about a lack of visible policing in their areas and the rise in antisocial behaviour, particularly in town centres.

We have all had to cut our coats according to our cloth, but Ms Hernandez and the crime panel appear not to share these concerns.

This latest police precept rise was described by one member of the panel as the cost of a Pot Noodle a month, but there are plenty who would rather have, or need, that Pot Noodle. There is little that is more annoying than feeling you are not getting what you pay for.