A CALL has been made for fairer funding for rural police forces such as Wiltshire’s.

The county’s police and crime commissioner (PCC) Angus Macpherson has backed a new report calling for rural forces to get more funding.

He argues the current structure “skews” funding towards urban areas.

The report was commissioned by the National Rural Crime Network (NRCN), of which Mr Macpherson is a member, and conducted by academics at Plymouth University.

Titled Fair Funding for Rural Policing: Report to the NRCN, it states that rural forces lose out financially as government thinking favours urban areas.

This is because the government appears to use the number of crimes recorded in an area as the principal basis for allocating money. This would mean funding would be disproportionately influenced by volume crimes such as shoplifting.

By definition, there are far more of these crimes in urban areas than in rural ones. However, the report claims such crimes are not an accurate measure of policing demand.

Mr Macpherson said the government’s approach of counting reported crime works “against rural forces” and “skews” funding towards areas with high volumes of thefts.

“[It] doesn’t reflect the complexity of demands on police or the specific challenge of policing sparse, rural populations,” he said.

“Post-Brexit, the funding settlement we received last year is now in question.

“It's therefore more important than ever to put forward the case of rural forces and ensure our voice is heard.”

Professor Sheena Asthana led the research on the report and condemned the government’s approach, which she said appears to “sacrifice fairness in pursuit of simplicity”.

“We think a fresh start is needed and that any new approach needs to use a different methodology and draw on different data if it is to achieve a fair system for distributing funds,” she said.

The report goes on to argue that rural areas face additional burdens that should be factored into funding, such as rural forces often having to ‘plug the gap’ left by other services such as health and social care whose services can be stretched in isolated areas.

They also have to shoulder the cost of significantly higher round-trip distances when attending incidents of crime and anti-social behaviour, as well as to road traffic incidents.

The Home Office is currently reviewing how it allocates national funds across forces.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Police reform is working and crime has fallen by more than a quarter since 2010, according to the Independent Crime Survey for England and Wales.

“Overall, people in rural areas are two-thirds as likely to be the victim of crime as those in urban areas.

“Reforming the police funding formula remains our ambition and we are carefully considering the options for how best to take this work forward.

“We will provide more information on our plans as soon as we are in a position to do so.”