Ten PCSO roles to be saved but 50 jobs could go

Ten police community support officer roles will be retained in Cheshire - but 50 jobs could still be lost.

Cheshire Police had said it would reduce PCSO numbers from 87 to 27 across the county, but the area's police and crime commissioner has now said 10 of those roles would remain.

Dan Price said he had also written to the government calling for more funding and was seeking to increase the precept paid by residents to try to save the remaining roles.

Chief Constable Mark Roberts said it was a "financially driven decision, it is not a policy decision" to lose the roles.

Speaking at an extraordinary meeting of the Cheshire Police and Crime Panel, Dan Price said the saving of roles was "not an accident" but a "direct result" of discussions between himself and the force.

"l have listened and acted and will continue to fight for the funding Cheshire deserves," he said.

Roberts also attended the meeting and laid out the force's financial position.

He said the force was to receive £3m less from the government than it had expected when the funding allocation was set out in mid-December.

The senior officer also said Cheshire had the 11th lowest precept out of the 43 forces in the country.

"In terms of our precept, that share of funding has risen from 30% of our budget in 2010 to 43% of the budget borne by the local taxpayer," he said.

The chief constable said that 52% of the budget is spent on staffing and pointed out that savings would have to come from police staff redundancies.

Police officers cannot be made redundant because they are crown servants.

He highlighted areas where there were large numbers of staff, including the control room and online investigations into child abuse.

He said if the performance of the 101 and 999 call centre drops "people can die", and with a reduction of staff investigating digital media, there could be a backlog in those cases.

"There's difficult choices, there's no easy way out," he said.

"If I reduce staff it would impact service. We are doing it in a way to try and maximise the service we give to the people of Cheshire."

Price said he had written to the government to "request flexibility" around the precept charged to pay for policing.

"This is an exceptional step only a handful of PCCs have been willing to do this," he said.

"It may be less than the price of a takeaway coffee each month and I'm hoping to save all 87 PCSO roles."

A consultation into next year's precept is asking if residents could pay a little more.

Price said: "The experience I've had so far says people do want to save PCSOs."

The consultation runs until 23 January.

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