Cambridgeshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Graham Bright has released details of how much he has spent running his office in his first year.
The commissioner spent the astronomical sum of: £885,312.99 on his office between November 2012 and November 2013.
This figure was not pro-actively released by the commissioner, but obtained via a Freedom of Information request I made.
A breakdown of this figure is given and it appears to exclude salaries for the commissioner and his deputy. [See Monday 9 December update, in fact the salaries were included under a bizarre heading of “support staff”] The costs of these (including employers’ national insurance) are £108,000.00 taking the total to £993,312.99. A further £10,000/year is budgeted for the commissioner and deputy’s expenses, which if claimed would put the total cost for the commissioner’s operation at over a million pounds a year (£1,003,312.99).
p42 of the Police Authority Accounts for 2011-12 (its last full year of operation) show its total expenditure, including members’ expenses and allowances, was £839,000.00.
Cambridgeshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner is spending more running his office than Cambridgeshire Police Authority cost to run
Of the £839,000.00 spent by the Police Authority £216,000.00 was spent on members’ expenses, allowances and other costs. Now we no longer have a Police Authority, and there are no members, this money should simply be being saved.
The cost of running the Police Authority’s office was £623,000.00 in 2011/12 whereas Police and Crime Commissioner Graham Bright’s comparable expenditure was £885,312.99. Police and Crime Commissioner Bright has spent £262,312.99 (42%) more than the Police Authority did on office costs. [See Monday 9 December update, Police and Commissioner Graham Bright actually spent £147,812 (24%) more on office costs.]
In February 2013 Police and Crime Commissioner Graham Bright presented a budget of £749,000.00 for his 2013/14 office costs to the Police and Crime Panel p13 of the submitted budget. The commissioner also allocated £117,000.00 for the Commissioner and his deputy broken down:
| Commissioner Salary | £70,000 |
| Commissioner NI | £7,000 |
| Deputy Cmmr Salary | £28,000 |
| Deputy Cmmr NI | £2,000 |
| Travel / Conferences etc. | £10,000 |
| TOTAL | £117,000 |
Are Salaries and Costs for the Commissioner and Deputy Included in Released Spending Information?
The only two categories of spending large enough to include the commissioner and deputy salary and national insurance costs are labelled “Hay Related Staff” and “Support Staff” respectively. If the commissioner’s salary is being obfuscated under such headings that would be surprising.
[See Monday 9 December update – the commissioner has clarified the costs were in fact obfuscated in this manner]
The £82,240.22 spent on “Fixed Term Contract Staff” is not large enough for the Commissioner’s £70,000/year salary to be included within that as well as payments to the deputy.
Even if the salaries of the commissioner and deputy were hidden somewhere within the released spending information that would reduce the costs of the commissioner’s operation by around £100,000 leaving his total costs at around £900,000; and his office costs still around £160,000 (~20%) greater than those of the Police Authority.[See Monday 9 December update for more accurate figures]
I hope that councillors, and or the professional press, will join me in trying to obtain clear information on the Police and Crime Commissioner’s spending. I am concerned that it appears the manner in which the Commissioner has released information is intended to obfuscate what is going on. It may be an active attempt to discredit those, like me, who comment on the unclear information while pursuing clarity.
Given the commissioner has accidentally included substantial expenditure in his published spending data by mistake it may be there is confusion and a lack of clarity within his office, and not just in what he is releasing to the public.
I have now sought explicit clarification from the commissioner as to what is included within the information released. I note my original request sought clarity and suggested a breakdown including ” Commissioner and Deputy (incl oncosts and expenses)”.
Police and Crime Commissioner’s Expenses
The Police and Crime Commissioner publishes monthly spending data. As yet he has not released detailed expenses information. The spending data released in response to my FOI request includes lines which appear to be expenses for the Police and Crime Commissioner.
There is £1742.14 worth of spending described as: “Police and Crime Commissioner – Car Allowances Staff”.
I note there are other lines of expenditure described as “Office of the Police & Crime Commissioner – Car Allowances Staff” so it does appear the former relate specifically to the Commissioner rather than his staff.
Other lines in the spending data include £10 of mince pies and £5 of “tea machine coins for PCC visi[t]”
I also noted the Commissioner has paid £18,609.00 towards the 2013/14 cost of ACPO.
Breach of Pre-Election Promise
Prior to the election I asked Graham Bright how much his office would cost given his plans to employ more staff:
Richard Taylor The MEP has just told me your two members of staff, the ones for engagement in Cambridge and Peterborough, will be on top of the staff currently employed by the Police Authority. Is that right? You are going to cost more, your office is going to be bigger, than the Police Authority’s?
Graham Bright It’s going to be less.
Deputy Commissioner Ashton assured his confirmation hearing that the commissioner’s office would cost less than the Police Authority cost.
See Also
- Commissioner Graham Bright – Office Costs and Deputy Appointment – December 2012
27 responses to “Cambs Police and Crime Commissioner Costing More Than Police Authority”
No rental costs for the Commissioner’s Cambourne office are included. In my Freedom of Information request I asked for details of the arrangement there (he could be using the facilities for free; he could be accruing a bill he hasn’t paid yet), but none were forthcoming.
It appears the latest budgets do include a rather hefty £36K/year rent payment; I’ve followed this up at:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/contract_with_cambridgeshire_pol#comment-60130
During a recent Home Affairs Select Committee session Warwickshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner reported he’d got rid of all the staff he’d inherited from his Police Authority and was planning to recruit just three.
The session transcript states:
What about the Finance Director he is advertising for via Reed Finance?
Those costs are included in the office costs (along with those of all the other staff, contractors and consultants).
Richard – I agree with you on the clarity issue. One can only take the view that the PCC does not want “nobodies” like you understanding too clearly what he does, and how he does it. You might tell someone.
Having said that I think you will find that the PCC and Deputies costs are included in the figures you received. Description 1 gives you who is responsible for the expenditure, Description 2 gives nature of expenditure (?). So under PCC / support staff you get a figure of £108k which is what you expect. Presumably the costs of the CFO/ treasurer has been split across 2 headings. I think his are the consultant and treasurer fees. Expect these costs to go up after recruitment by Reed of a new CFO. One also presumes that Office costs will not be rduced by the employment of a Director of Communication and Public Engagement. Clearly the PCC is recruiting someone to more effectively dismiss your comments and spin the great value that the PCC provides whilst failing to hold the police accountable for anything – given that anything beyond targeting a few cyclists is an “operational matter”.
You mention the fees for ACPO, but you don’t mention the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners. A hefty cost for us at just under £20k, but no doubt a well worth spend for Sir Graham who through his role on the Board of APCC gets to have his ego massaged by attendance at the HoC etc. (His recent appearance on the Home Affairs Committee was a classic performance, and the contrast with the more polished performance of Tony Lloyd was notable.)
It should not be necessary for you to put in an FOI request for such basic information from a democratically elected body.
Yes, as well as the ACPO subscription Police & Crime Commissioner Graham Bright has spent £19,750.00 of the taxpayer’s money under his control on a subscription to the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.
His decisions to make each of those payments have not been submitted by the commissioner to the Police and Crime Panel for scrutiny; despite commissioner Bright repeatedly assuring them he is reporting all decisions to them.
It appears the commissioner has also taken out a “Barclaycard” and taxpayers are paying the bill. Payments listed are for £158.34, £113.17, £106.75, £5.52, £43.80, £90, £102.00 and £47.65.
A Freedom of Information request would be required to obtain the individual transactions on the statements.
The commissioner has also billed the taxpayer 20p for “2 teas”; one for him and one for his Chief Executive; this is described as “internal hospitality”.
The commissioner has clarified that his salary and that of the deputy is included [bizarrely] under “support staff”.
This means the key figures are:
A year’s worth of salaries, national insurance and expenses for the commissioner and deputy is, as broken down above, £117,000. Two months off the deputy’s given he wasn’t appointed for November and December 2012 reduces this by £5,000 to £112,000.
The commissioner’s office costs are £147,812 (24%) higher than the Police Authority and overall the commissioner is costing more than the Police Authority did too.
A corrected graph based on the clarified information:
I can’t believe this, please continue to investigate and inform those of us who aren’t aware of these scandalous excesses ~ needs monitoring closely and full justification.
(Location – Peterborough)
The BBC Cambridgeshire Breakfast show with Paul Stainton on the 10th of December 2013 reported Police and Crime Commissioner Graham Bright’s spending on his office in his first year.
The show will be available for about a week; and the section is at 2.21 at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01lsbmj/The_Paul_Stainton_Bigger_Breakfast_Show_The_Paul_Stainton_Bigger_Breakfast_Show/
Police and Crime Commissioner Graham Bright has defended his spending on the BBC Cambridgeshire Drivetime show:
By Drivetime Police and Crime Commissioner Graham Bright succumbed to the pressure to defend his broken promise and excess spending on his office and appeared on the Chris Mann show on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.
The full interview is available via the embedded video; I have transcribed the excerpt relating to his office costs:
What on earth does Graham Bright mean when he says he’s “One hundred thousand below budget”?
What does he mean when he says he’s going to “sort of try to work on blue life”?
Graham Bright is wrong to suggest collaborations between forces is something which was not considered under the Police Authority; the current collaboration between Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire started under the Police Authority.
As Graham Bright notes his responsibility for Victim Support is something to come in the future; so it isn’t something he can use to justify his higher office costs.
The commissioner also told Chris Mann that everything other than local policing (and Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners) had been shared between Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
My view is if the three forces have effectively merged then we have ended up with two many Chiefs and Commissioners and ought to cut down the top level too.
If Police and Crime Commissioner Bright sees himself as being £100K below budget that presumably explains why he’s still relentlessly expanding his office, employing more and more people.
Richard,
The meeting papers for the police and crime panel meeting on the 5th Febuary have been published today. These include for the first time publication of the proposed accounts and precept for the coming financial year. In the documentation he mentions that despite 5k tweets relating to the increased precept they only received 2 items of correspondence with regards to this in December. At the time I searched online for the proposed budget and could not find it. Given this no wonder no feedback to his office.
From a very swift perusaI I guess the headlines are the announced 1.97% increase in the precept (or as Sir Graham preferred a 7p per week increase), the reduction in the police grant by £3.7m, the increase in the PCC office costs to £1.2m, the savings in the police budget of £3.4m, and the reduction in the police workforce by 51 (including 30 PCO’s).
The politics of the budget are the avoidance of a referendum on the increased precept by putting the increase at 0.03% below the point where a referedum is triggered (this is explicit in the documentation), the continued claim that the budget for the PCC office for the current financial year represented an 11% saving over the police authority, the transfer of victim support to the responsibility of the office of the PCC (represented by £300k increase in the office costs), clarity on the reporting structures for shared constabulary resources and responsibility for savings, the reduction of PCO’s and therefore frontline patrols, and the legitimacy of the PCC’s plan from his claims about feedback mechanisms including attendance at neighbourhood watch AGM’s (none listed in recent publication of Sir Grahams diary. Oh and finally the accounts being prepared by Niki Howard who is described as the Cheif Financial Officer although this post would appear to be vacant according to the PCC website!
My view the budget will be nodded through by the panel based on previous form where limited questions are asked or answered.
I used the public participation agenda item at the Police and Crime Panel to suggest the panel use the spending information released as the basis to question the commissioner on his first year spending.
Acting Chairman Cllr Jason Ablewhite responded saying that looking at budgets was sufficient and suggesting there was no need to look at what actually was spent:
http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/curtis-response-pcp-submission.html#comment-89290
The oversight of the PCC finances are unbelievably poor. Sir Graham has been able to get away with claiming that he has saved money in his office by comparing a budget with a previous budget, and with no reference to actual known expenditure. That the crime panel buys this is scandalous. The panel is just not fit for purpose.
The latest budget for the Police and Crime Commissioner’s Office is £1.2m per year for each of 2014/15 and 2015/16
Section 9.2
http://democracy.peterborough.gov.uk/documents/s23123/6.%20Budget%20-%20Appendix%201%20Finances%20Update%20Report%20-%20CPCP%20-%20150318.pdf
On the 7th of August 2015 the Taxpayer’s Alliance published research (detailed PDF), carried out via Freedom of Information requests, on the costs of Police and Crime Commissioners’ Offices which concluded:
Cambridgeshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner has issued a statement (snapshot 2015-08-11 00:30) claiming the Taxpayers’ Alliance’s report is incorrect, he also claims to have costed less than the Police Authority did.
The Police and Crime Commissioner’s statement is highly misleading. He is claiming that because he was holding £163,000 of undistributed grant funds we should subtract that from the costs of his office. The fact he was holding cash he hadn’t distributed is utterly irrelevant to any assessment of his spending on his office.
The Police and Crime Commissioner took the Cambridgeshire Police Authority expenditure for 2010/11 as £836,000 (including members’ allowances and expenses). The Police and Crime Commissioner didn’t provide a reference for that figure but it can be found In the 2011/12 statement of accounts.
The members’ allowances and expenses for 2010/11 were £210,655 – these are not office costs so should be subtracted giving the 2010/11 Police Authority Office Costs of £625,345.
The Police and Crime Commissioners’ 2013/14 accounts show, on p57, a total expenditure of £1,787,000 of which £1,060,000 was grants rather than office costs, and £109,000 for the commissioner, and his friend Brian‘s, salary and expenses. The remainder is office costs of £618,000.
So in summary:
The Police and Crime Commissioner’s Office was, in that year, cheaper. The year before though, in 2012/13 he paid £90,000 more out in staff costs and had significantly higher office running costs and professional fees so the comparable figure was £835,000.
Quite why the taxpayers alliance, and the Police and Crime Commissioner didn’t use the 2011/12 figure (which was just £3,000 greater) for comparison isn’t clear given that financial year ended in April 2012, a clear six months before the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners.
Looking at each year from 2010-11:
The final line is calculated the Police and Crime Commissioner’s 2014-15 statement of accounts which shows £6,937,000 of expenditure, of which £5,912,000 was for grants,and £109,000 for the commissioner, and his friend Brian‘s, salary and expenses. I have considered the £6,000 spent on the Police and Crime Commissioner’s pet “cadets” project to be part of his office costs.
The latest accounts are very confusing, the Commissioner has for example listed his office staff as “police staff”.
Overall
The latest accounts from Cambridgeshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner show his office is costing £922,000 compared with the £623,000 the Police Authority cost in its last year of operation.
That’s an absolute increase of £299,000 and a percentage increase of 48%.
In terms of per person efficiency, £922,000 assuming the a 900,000 population, that’s £1024.40 per thousand people per year. The Taxpayer’s alliance in their press release said they had produced a per resident figure, but the detailed PDF headed it a per thousand 2012 electors figure, using the 599,894 electorate figure gives an office cost for 2014-15 of £1,537 per thousand electors.
For an even simpler comparison lets just take the staff costs (not including costs of either Police Authority members or the Police and Crime Commissioner and his friend who replaced them.
The latter figure includes £10,000 of non-operational consultants.
The Police and Crime Commissioner’s current office staffing budget is 177% (2.7 times) higher than the amount the Police Authority spent in its final full year of operation.
The Cambridge News have published an article: Police boss Sir Graham Bright denies he’s ‘worst value’ crime commissioner as office costs spiral.
I’ve commented on it:
To reference the points made I included a link to this page.