The Government's priority is to protect the frontline and maintain a focus on increasing public confidence in the police service and achieving improvements in value for money. To support this the Government made clear in the pre-Budget report last December that it will provide sufficient funding in the next comprehensive spending review to enable police authorities to maintain current numbers of police officers, police community support officers and other staff exercising police powers in the years to 2012-13.
The decision on the number and mix of frontline officers and other staff that will best serve the public is an operational matter for individual chief constables and police authorities to determine.