Backed by local victim services and members of parliament, Matt’s Fairer Funding, Safer Cleveland campaign highlights disparities between demand and the outdated funding formula used to set levels of police funding in England and Wales.
Matt penned a letter, co-signed by representatives of local victim support services, calling for the Chancellor to allocate a fairer share of funding in Cleveland.
Matt argues that Cleveland Police is among the worst-funded police forces in the country on a per resident basis.
He states that the current funding formula – which has not been revisited since 2010 – relies on outdated population statistics and metrics.
In the letter, Matt says that the funding provided by the Ministry of Justice for victim support is calculated on the population of the police force area, not on crime rates or demand on victim services.
This means that a small, but high crime area like Cleveland receives about half of the victim funding allocated to the safest force area in the country – simply because it is larger in population size.
This has led to the situation where the five forces in England and Wales with the lowest crime rates receive around £19 per crime for victim support services. Cleveland, with the highest crime rate in the country, receives just £7 per crime.
Based on Cleveland receiving the same amount of victim funding as the five forces with the lowest crime rates, the area would get almost £1m extra per year to fund much-needed victim support services.
Matt says: “At the moment, I am propping up our victim support provision with funds from my wider budget, as current Government funding does not go far enough. With an additional £1m, I could cover any gaps and invest in initiatives to reduce crime in the first place.”
In the latest ONS statistics, Cleveland recorded the highest crime rate per head of population of any force in England and Wales. During year ending March 2025, Cleveland suffered 122.1 crimes per 1,000 population – a stark contrast to the national average of 87.2.
It has the highest crime rates in the country for some of the most traumatic offences, including violence, sexual offences and arson.
Matt also stresses that two of our local authority areas - Middlesbrough and Hartlepool - are among the 10 most deprived areas in the country, according to the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (2019). Both have the highest proportion of neighbourhoods in the most deprived 10 per cent of neighbourhoods nationally.
Matt continues: “This sad picture tells us that when you live in Cleveland, you are not only more likely to become a victim of crime, you are also more likely to need extra support to navigate the justice system and recover in the aftermath of a crime.
“Yet despite this clear evidence of overwhelming need, the funding currently allocated to victim services in Cleveland is simply not enough.”
Matt was joined at the Darlington Economic Campus by members of his Policy, Partnerships and Delivery Team, Andy McDonald MP, a representative from the office of Jonathan Brash MP and representatives from Arch Teesside, Eva Women’s Aid, Harbour Support Services and A Way Out.
Read the letter here: https://www.cleveland.pcc.
