LAST September, about 70 protestors supporting the English Defence League took part in a rally at Church Green, in Keighley.

Elsewhere in the town, at the same time, approximately 90 counter-protestors voiced their opposition in two different locations. The events passed off relatively peacefully with only four EDL supporters arrested for minor public order offences.

The outcome could have been very different had it not been for the deployment of 414 West Yorkshire Police officers and another 150 from as far away as Northumbria and North Wales.

It sounds like overkill – but the police can never accurately predict how many people will turn up on either side of the protest and their highly-successful tactic, for which many towns and cities have learned to be very grateful, is to contain the disruption by keeping them apart.

Until the law around such events changes, police have no option but to rely on substantial manpower to control them and ensure that local communities do not suffer because of their presence.

But it also means that forces such as West Yorkshire must pick up the bill for doing so, in this case £207,041.

There can be few people who would disagree with this approach. As Councillor Michael Westerman, chairman of Keighley Town Council’s watch and transport committee, said at the time: “I think £207,000 to protect the town was money well spent. You can’t put a price on people’s safety.”

The problem for the police, though, is that such events put an unwelcome extra strain on their limited resources.

As part of the now-traditional lobbying to persuade successive Chancellors to protect police funding each November, West Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Mark Burns-Williamson, urged the county’s MPs to back calls for an increase.

He argued that, since 2010, the force had suffered total budget cuts of £140 million and lost 2,000 officers and staff. He said its reserves of £95 million could all be spent by 2022 because of capital building and new technology commitments and that £11 million of them had been spent on funding frontline policing in 2017 alone.

The Home Office, however, insisted that West Yorkshire Police’s reserves – which it must retain for contingencies by law – had tripled since 2011 and it’s 2016-17 direct funding had increased by £3.7 million over the previous year.

Chancellor Philip Hammond did little to help in his autumn budget. Although the Government announced in December that police funding nationally was set to “increase by £450 million in 2018”, according to independent fact-checking charity Full Fact there were no changes in the size of direct grants to forces compared to last year, which meant they were facing a real-terms reduction.

What the Government did do, however, was to allocate an extra £50 million to counter-terrorism operations and a further £130 million to cover unexpected events such as terrorist attacks and to improve the technology forces use.

The Chancellor also switched some of the tax burden from central government to local taxation, allowing police and crime commissioners to raise a maximum of £270 million nationally by increasing council tax precepts, without having to hold a referendum.

According to Full Fact, that means 68 per cent of funding in 2018-19 will come from central government and 32 per cent from local taxation, a plan which has received a mixed reaction: some say it’s just a tactic to allow the Chancellor to avoid increasing central taxes, while others welcome the fact it gives more direct accountability for spending, making it easier for people to see exactly where their money goes.

Either way, it has led Mr Burns-Williamson to ask council-tax payers how much extra they would be willing to pay for more police officers.

The proposed options are one, two, five or 10 per cent increases. The highest rise would cost band D households an extra £15 a year, and raise more than £9.6 million.

Last year, the police precept rose by 3.43 per, a £5 increase for Band D properties, from £145 to £150 a year, after a survey showed with 77.2 per cent of respondents in West Yorkshire supported the move.

Mr Burns-Williamson said increasing the precept “would enable our police service to recruit more police, and have the resources they need to keep West Yorkshire safe and feeling safe.

“As an example; if I were to raise the precept by five per cent, it would cost households in Band D an extra £7.55 per year (around 14p per week). Many houses in West Yorkshire are in Bands A and B, so most people would pay even less than this. This relatively small increase to each household would raise an estimated £4.8 million for policing in West Yorkshire.”

Judging by a recent T&A online poll, which saw 86 per cent of respondents wanting more money spent on policing, he could be preaching to the converted.

? To have your say, see the survey at smartsurvey.co.uk/s/funding-our-police.

ENDS