29/06/2011

Changes Throughout Force Will Save £33m

Greater Manchester Police have unveiled controversial plans to improve performance and achieve savings.

The changes will focus around modernising the way in which people contact and communicate with their local police officers, creating a specialised fraud team to work on complicated fraud investigations and centralising forensic teams, so they are able to work more flexibly to attend scenes across the Force where they are needed the most.

The changes will save around £33m, but mean the loss of 616 police staff posts and 270 police officer posts. However, with existing vacancies in the Force, voluntary redundancy and redeployment, compulsory redundancies are hoped to be kept to a minimum.

Chief Constable Peter Fahy said: "Crime in Greater Manchester is at its lowest level for 10 years, but the current financial situation has left us with some difficult decisions to make. We have been modernising the way in which the Force works and over the coming months will be making changes to improve performance and ensure value for money.

"The review that we have carried out has provided us with some opportunities to provide a better service and in many cases become more efficient in the way that we work.

"Greater Manchester Police has to save £134m over the next four years and as more than 80 per cent of our budget is currently spent on staff, we need to make some very tough and painful decisions.

"This week and the coming months will continue to be a very difficult time for many of our staff and we will be providing as much support to them as we can."

(BMcN/GK)

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