Crime drop despite falling police numbers shows public sector reform can work, says Gorst

Monday 08 February 2016

Figures showing the lowest crime rates since 1981 at a time when police officer numbers have dropped 10% shows that public sector reform can achieve better results with less spending and resources, says Chief Minister Ian Gorst.

Last week the police announced that 2015’s crime figures showed yet another fall – the crime rate has dropped a third since 2011, at the same time that the number of serving police officers has fallen by 10%.

And the Chief Minister says that the combination shows that restructuring and reforming the public sector can lead to better services at a lower cost to the taxpayer.

He said: “This is happening not just in the police service, there they have got the lowest crime figure since 1981 and have reduced officer numbers by ten per cent, it’s also happening at Social Security and it’s happening in some central functions of human resources.

“We will see more and more of it, and that’s basically what we are doing in terms of reprioritising our spending.”

The public sector reform process is part of an overall effort to cut spending, but also to change the way that the States operates across each department, to ensure that resources are being targeted at results in a much more focused way.

The States have agreed an ambitious target of cutting £70 million from the public sector pay bill and £20 million from running costs by 2019 as part of a package of measures to fund a major black hole in public spending.