DEVON and Cornwall Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Hogg, has said he will no longer be seeking a 15 per cent council tax increase.

Commissioner Hogg had been considering asking the public if they would be prepared to pay an extra 15 per cent on their council tax – the equivalent of an extra £158 a year on a Band-A property – to mitigate the Government cuts to the police.

But the Government’s decision to abandon the Home Office review into the funding formula, instead commissioning an independent survey, means that Commissioner Hogg will no longer be seeking that rise.

This comes after police minister Mike Penning announced his intention to review the funding formula after a ‘statistical error’ meant that out-of-date information was used to calculate the new funding formula for the police.

Cmmr Hogg said: ‘Mr Penning announced his intention to review the funding formula over the next twelve months and I intend to write to Mr Penning offering the support of this office for the next phase of this work.

‘Our team, with a great deal of help from the Force, has shown that it knows more about funding than any other force in the country and I now intend to offer our support to the Government in the next phase of the formula review.

‘Any new formula must recognise long-standing key issues such as the impact of rurality and tourism on the demands of policing.

‘As a result of this and the impact it has on the funding formula element of the savings target, I have revised my budget reduction assumption so that the savings we need to make have been reduced from £54m down to £39m.’

The delay in the review means that the budget position for all police forces, which was expected later this month, will now not be confirmed until December 2016.

Cmmr Hogg concluded: ‘I will make my budget decisions before and after Christmas and I expect there will still be uncertainty in the final budget position.

‘I have therefore decided it is more appropriate that any request to consider something as important as a large increase in council tax should be made when the position is clearer and, given this significant development, probably in the next financial year.’