Budget boost to give police more investigators

Police on the Isle of Man will be able to put more resources into some of its investigations teams after a boost in the latest budget, the chief constable has said.

The Department of Home Affairs was allocated £52.7m, an increase of £7.3m from the year before, as the 2026-27 Manx government budget was delivered on Tuesday.

Within that allocation, £26.6m has been earmarked for the Isle of Man Constabulary.

Chief Constable Russ Foster said the funding would help the force meet challenges such as the "rise in sexual and violent crime, as well as digital and financial crime".

"We've seen demands increase particularly around sexual violence, around domestic abuse, across the island," Foster said.

The funding would allow "increases in investigative capacity in safeguarding areas", including a boost to the Protecting Vulnerable People Investigations team "with additional investigators", he said.

He added that the force had built up resources in the international money laundering investigations team, which was now "fixed in the baseline budget".

The funding would also help to strengthen the Digital Evidence Unit, Foster explained.

He said they had found that 91% of crimes being recorded now had a digital footprint, whereby devices were being "used to perpetrate criminality" or offences took place online.

Investment in the team examining electronic devices was therefore "really welcomed", he said.

Foster also outlined that the police force had faced a structural deficit over "police officer pay over recent years".

He explained that student officers on the Isle of Man now have a starting salary of just over £35,000 per year, previously just over £28,500 - and after three years that would rise to more than £50,000.

But while officers had seen "a significant increase in their pay", that had not until now, "been reconciled from a Treasury perspective", he said, which this budget now addressed.

Speaking in Tynwald on Tuesday, Home Affairs Minister Jane Poole-Wilson commented on the pay recognition and said she was "pleased that the balance is being redressed".

She added however that the pay awards were "out of our control and significantly above the amount allocated in our budget for pay awards", which had led to the police pay budget "being severely eroded".

Despite this she said the budget would "contribute to rebalancing the pay budget" for the police force and "help support frontline capability".

She added that the bolstering of investigations teams would support bringing "perpetrators of these most harmful crimes to justice swiftly and effectively".

Among other parts of the DHA's budget, was a £4.1m investment being made over the next two years to improve emergency service fleet vehicles, including the police force, as well as the fire and rescue service, and ambulances.

And a further £2.5m in funding was being committed over five years to "replace equipment essential to the safe and modern delivery of services provided by police, fire and rescue, and civil defence".

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