(a)

Devon and Cornwall Police had led the way in challenging the Government’s funding formula and would continue to do so;

(b)

the implications of the proposed savings were dire and if they were presented in risk register format they would be displayed as red;

(c)

the National Audit Office was of the opinion that the Government had not fully understood the impact of the savings being sought;

(d)

the regions’ MPs had been slow to respond to the concerns raised;

(e)

crime was changing and traditional methods of policing would have to change in order to achieve the savings required.   Low, medium and high risk crime and associated service provision would have to be categorised into what must be done, should be done and could be done;

(f)

no decision had been made in regard to holding a referendum.  It was merely the Commissioner’s intention to gauge public appetite for one and whether or not there would be any support for an increase to the precept;

(g)

if an excessive increase was proposed then two separate budgets would need to be presented to the panel at the precept meeting on 5 February 2016.

(h)

the format for the ballot question was prescribed by statute;

(i)

copies of the presentation slides would be circulated to the panel after the meeting;

(j)

by stopping recruitment, and through the process of natural retirement, a number of posts could be reduced without the need for redundancies;

(k)

sharing the Force’s dog services with HMRC and exploring crowd funding opportunities were already under consideration;

(l)

in addition to use of a statistics agency to undertake a poll, the consultation would also be circulated to local authority leaders, senior members of society and publicised using social media;

(m)

the OPCC was aware that the south west had a number of areas of deprivation and this had been taken into consideration in its submission.  Unfortunately, the Government used deprivation measures which favoured urban areas and not rural areas such as Devon and Cornwall;

(n)

the funding formula calculation hadn’t taken the effects of Tourism on the area into account either;

(o)

any increase to the precept would be a percentage increase of the police’s share of the Council Tax (10%) not a percentage increase of the Council Tax as a whole.