Updated: Over £260m to be cut from policing spend over next four years – but £171m to be added

The headline figures in the draft Northern Ireland budget re-allocation indicated only relatively small changes to the current expenditure of the NI Department of Justice up to 2014/15.  Three years of consecutive cuts – £10.6million in 2011/12, £24.1million in 2012/13 and £22 .3million in 213/14 – followed by a slight increase of £9.7million in 2014/15.

But, as the BBC reports, the detail published today by the NI Department of Justice reveals that the police, in particular, are expected to find significant levels of “savings” in each of the next 4 years.  As the BBC report notes

More than £260m is to be cut from the policing budget over the next four years.

Northern Ireland’s prison service will have to find savings of just over £65m.

According to the quote in that report

Justice Minister David Ford said: “What we have done is to ensure that we get the best possible protection for front-line services.

“There is a lot of work being done to trim the back office costs and to look at efficiency in that kind of area.”

Here’s the table of the “savings targets” in the Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit from the DOJ document [pdf file]

Adds  And here are the draft budget allocations for the Resource DEL within which those savings must be found.

Update  Apparently, the £260million ‘savings’ are partially off-set by £171.1million in funded spending proposals included in the draft budget – see table below.

We are reader supported. Donate to keep Slugger lit!

For over 20 years, Slugger has been an independent place for debate and new ideas. We have published over 40,000 posts and over one and a half million comments on the site. Each month we have over 70,000 readers. All this we have accomplished with only volunteers we have never had any paid staff.

Slugger does not receive any funding, and we respect our readers, so we will never run intrusive ads or sponsored posts. Instead, we are reader-supported. Help us keep Slugger independent by becoming a friend of Slugger. While we run a tight ship and no one gets paid to write, we need money to help us cover our costs.

If you like what we do, we are asking you to consider giving a monthly donation of any amount, or you can give a one-off donation. Any amount is appreciated.