Since 1995, police forces in England and Wales have been able to raise revenues locally to supplement grants from central government. We analyse the variation across police force areas in locally raised police revenues over the 2000s, and we find that three‐quarters of the temporal and spatial variation in local revenues per head can be explained by differences in incomes, prices and local preferences. A particularly robust parameter is the effective local community tax price associated with raising revenue. We discuss the police funding model in the wider context of fiscal federalism, and we point to alternative funding structures that could be adopted.
Authors
Research Associate University of Sussex
Richard is an IFS Research Associate, a Part-time Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex and a Visiting Professor of Economics at UCL.
Rowena Crawford
Polly Simpson
Journal article details
- DOI
- 10.1111/1475-5890.12206
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Issue
- Volume 4, Issue 40, February 2020, pages 663-685
Suggested citation
R, Crawford and R, Disney and P, Simpson. (2020). 'Financing local police spending in England and Wales: fiscal federalism in practice' 4(40/2020), pp.663–685.
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