Decision details

The Decision is that:
• The 2025/26 Mayoral Police and Crime Commissioner precept is set at £270.30 for a Band D property.
• Issues an appropriate overall precept requirement of £222,183,670 on the ten billing authorities in the Greater Manchester area, to be incorporated as part of the Council Tax for the purposes of Police and Crime for the financial year beginning 1 April 2025 and ending 31 March 2026 (Appendix 1).
• The 2025/26 Police Fund revenue budget of £871.652m is approved.
• The 2025/26 Police Fund capital budget of £38.030m is approved.
• Note that the borrowing requirement is £36.819m for 2025/26.

The Mayor is his capacity as Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) has a statutory duty and electoral mandate to ensure an efficient and effective police service and to hold the police to account on behalf of the public.

The Mayor is the recipient of funding relating to policing and crime reduction, including government grants, the council tax precept and other sources of income. How this money is allocated is a matter for the Mayor in consultation with the Chief Constable, or in accordance with any grant terms.

The provisions of Section 32 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 require the Mayor to set a balanced PCC budget.

In addition, Section 26 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 establishes the PCC as a precepting authority for the purposes of the 1992 Act. Which means the PCC decides how much local people pay for policing through their council tax. The Mayor exercises this function through the GMCA as the precepting authority for Greater Manchester.

In the 2025/26 government settlement the Home Secretary announced a maximum police precept increase of £14 per year for a Band D property.

In accordance with Part 2 of the Police and Crime Panels (Precepts and Chief Constable Appointments) Regulations 2012 an initial Mayoral PCC precept proposal of £14 was submitted to the Police and Crime Panel on 27 January 2025.

The 2025/26 settlement for Police was received from the Government on 30 January 2025 totalling £649m, changed from £608.6m in 2024/25. To ensure forces maintain the additional 20,000 police officers, £376.8m of the 2025/26 national PCC allocation will be ringfenced. For GM this is £20.2m plus an additional £11m for forces, such as GMP, that volunteered to recruit above their uplift target as an ‘additional recruitment top-up grant’. The ringfenced grant will be paid if GMP has maintained its overall officer headcount of 8,151, inclusive of the additional recruitment agreed on 31 March 2023. Access to ringfence funding shares will be based upon headcount levels recorded at data collection points on 30 September
2025 and 31 March 2026 and paid in January and July 2026 following the publication of police workforce statistics. For delivery of 13,000 more personnel in neighbourhood policing roles by 2029
additional funding has been allocated. For 2025/26 £200m has been allocated nationally and for GM this is £11.6m. Forces will be paid in accordance with the growth in personnel against the local baseline for each relevant worker type within neighbourhood policing.

The Government has given Police and Crime Commissioners the ability to raise the precept by up to £1.17 a month (£14 a year) for an average Band D property and £0.91 pence per month (£10.89 a year) for a Band B property (80% of households in Greater Manchester are in Bands A-C).

Even with a £14 precept increase the 2025/25 police budget will require the delivery of significant efficiencies to manage inflationary pressures, whilst continuing to deliver improvements. Funding below that level would risk efficiencies becoming service cuts and threaten the progress that GMP is making, in areas such as Force
Contact Centre (call handling) and Neighbourhood Policing.

A consultation was carried out via an online survey, hosted on www.gmconsult.org. The consultation was open from 6th January to 17th January 2025 and was widely publicised in the local press, on social media and via GMCA newsletters. A total of 571 responses were received, from this 31.35% supported a precept increase of £14
per year or more and 67.60% did not support an increase in the precept. All qualitative responses received are available on our consultation platform, GM Consult.

Following the consultation, a precept increase of £14 to the current band D precept was proposed at the meeting of the Police, Crime and Fire Panel on 27th January 2025 and supported. This means that I am determining my Band D Mayoral PCC precept to be £270.30.

The decision to increase the precept by £14 was not taken lightly due to the impact it has on local taxpayers. Coupled with further efficiency savings, and along with the central Government grant, an increase in precept of £14 a year will provide the funding to sustain the improvements already achieved over the past year and deliver
the following additional benefits:

• Remain one of the best police forces in the country in answering 999 and 101 calls.
• Further improve response times for emergency and non-emergency incidents.
• Retain investment in neighbourhood policing and crime prevention teams to further reduce neighbourhood crimes.
• Invest a further 30 police officers into Operation Vulcan which has now expanded beyond Cheetham Hill to Piccadilly Gardens and to Victoria and Piccadilly train stations.
• Invest in locking up more criminals and providing swifter and better services for victims and witnesses through investment in investigations and criminal justice units.
• Invest in prosecuting offenders with a focus on increasing arrests for sex offenders and ensuring justice for vulnerable victims.

Following this increase the Greater Manchester police and crime precept will remain one of the 10 lowest out of the 42 police and crime areas of England. It is important to note that Greater Manchester is more dependent than other areas on changes to Government grant funding due to the lower council tax base in the region. The nationally £14 maximum increase will therefore raise significantly less funds for GM per head of population than in many other areas of the country.