Cleveland Police Funding Row as MP Warns of 40 Officers Equivalent Gap.

£2.4m Shortfall Exposes Cleveland Police Funding Crisis

Cleveland Police Faces £2.4m Funding Gap as MPs and PCC Condemn “Broken” System

23rd Jan 2026

Cleveland Police is facing renewed political and public scrutiny over its financial future following claims the force with no public confidence is confronting a £2.4 million pound funding shortfall—an amount described as the equivalent to the cost of around 40 full-time police officers.

Stockton South MP Matt Vickers stated the funding from central government was “the worst financial settlement in the whole country”

The warning was raised by Stockton South MP Matt Vickers, who said the force had received “the worst financial settlement in the whole country” from the Labour Government, arguing that, once police pay awards were factored in, Cleveland Polices settlement amounts to an effective increase of just 2.9 per cent, representing a real-term reduction in operational funding. Mr Vickers said the scale of the shortfall posed a direct risk to frontline policing capacity at a time when local communities continue to face serious crime pressures.

“A huge strain on the force": The funding settlement has equally been criticised by the ares Crime Commissioner Matt Storey

That position has now been formally reinforced by the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cleveland, Matt Storey, who's branded the Government’s funding settlement “farcical” and warned that it's placing “a huge strain” on the force.

Mr Storey confirmed that, because Government grants are rising at a significantly lower rate than inflation and police pay awards, Cleveland Police is now facing the same £2.4 million funding gap identified by MPs—again described as the equivalent of around 40 full-time officers. He said the settlement exposes deep structural flaws in the national police funding system, which allocates resources primarily on the basis of population size while failing to account for deprivation, recorded crime levels, or operational demand.

In a strongly worded statement, Mr Storey said:

“The system used to fund police forces in this country is broken. I’m saddened that despite my pleas, the Government has chosen not to heed my requests for fairer funding for Cleveland. Let’s be clear, this settlement completely fails to deliver the resources required to meet the demand faced by Cleveland Police and falls far short of what is needed.”

The PCC’s intervention sharpens a growing regional narrative that despite the litany of scandals Cleveland Police is structurally disadvantaged by the national funding formula, which local leaders argue systematically underestimates the cost of policing areas with high deprivation and concentrated crime patterns. Critics of the formula maintain that population-based modelling fails to reflect the true demand profile faced by forces such as Teesside, where crime intensity, vulnerability, and repeat victimisation create sustained pressure on frontline services.

The Labour Government maintains that national police funding has increased overall, but locally the political and operational dispute centres on what those uplifts mean in practical terms once inflation and pay settlements are absorbed. For locals living in Teesside, the concern is not simply the headline figure, but the net operational impact— and what remains available for neighbourhood policing, response teams, and visible patrol capacity once core costs are covered.

As both MPs and the Police and Crime Commissioner continue to push for reform, the dispute places renewed focus on the long-standing argument that police funding in England and Wales requires fundamental restructuring and whether the low funding settlement is intentional, as the government looks to cut the number of police forces considerably in the biggest national shake up to policing since the 1960s.