POLICE funding is to be overhauled to give greater flexibility on spending amid concern over staff targets. The Chief Constable of one of Britain’s biggest forces has admitted that officers cannot cope with the level of violent crime.

Steve Green, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire, said yesterday that current financing arrangements left his force unable to cope with the number of murders which have overwhelmed his officers.

The force, the worst performing in England and Wales, has had to borrow officers from other forces for investigations.Mr Green said he was preparing to “farm out” murder investigations to other forces because his detectives did not have the time to tackle them.

He plans to pass Category C murder inquiries, such as domestic killings, to other forces to investigate. Nottinghamshire has up to 30 murder investigations under way, including some incidents dating as far back as 1983 and 1988. It has run out of major incident rooms, and classrooms in training blocks are being converted for officers to work in.

Mr Green, who has been Chief Constable since 2000, said: “We are reeling with murders. We are in a longstanding crisis situation with major crime and it won’t go away overnight. Having police doing back-office jobs is one of the factors.” He said that government funding arrangements and the drive to increase the number of police officers was resulting in officers doing clerical work. There have been mounting complaints from chief constables that the current funding arrangements are a “straitjacket” which prevents forces from making best use of their officers and civilian staff in the fight against crime.

Cash from the Government’s Crime Fighting Fund can be spent only on extra police officers. The result has been a surge in police numbers in England and Wales to reach record levels. But as overall police budgets have become tighter, forces have let civilian staff leave and officers are doing their jobs instead.

Senior officers are pressing to be allowed more flexibility over spending money from the fund. It would allow them to hire civilian forensic analysts or civilian crime investigators rather than having to employ more officers.

The Home Office is preparing to create an overall Neighbourhood Policing Fund, which will give the senior officers some of the flexibility they are demanding.

But ministers are wary about relaxing the guidelines too much because they fear that without ring-fencing the drive to increase police numbers would falter as forces divert cash to other priorities.

Chris Fox, chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: “The Crime Fighting Fund was an excellent way of increasing police numbers. We have been asking for more flexibility in how we spend from the fund. The Home Office would like to do it but it is difficult in the face of every political party focusing on more police officers now rather than on the totality of the police service.”

Despite Mr Green’s complaints about funding the arrangements, the difficulties he is facing also relate to years of under-performance that have allowed organised criminality and a gang culture to establish itself in Nottingham city.

In 2003 Nottinghamshire became the first force in more than a decade to fail a Home Office test on effectiveness and efficiency. Graham Allen, the Labour MP for Nottingham North, last night rounded on the Chief Constable, accusing him of demoralising officers. He said that he had talked with Mr Green twice last week but the Chief Constable had not raised the issue.

“Nottinghamshire Constabulary have got an extra 319 police officers since 2000, which is a serious increase. One has to ask whether they are being properly deployed,” he said.

Nottinghamshire is set to receive £132.8million from the Home Office in 2005-06, an increase of more than 4 per cent.

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