Police chief's warning of job losses

West Midlands Police chief constable Chris Sims today warned of job losses after revealing that an already proposed £50 million savings scheme will fall short.

A shake-up of police services in the region has cut £3.4 million off force budgets since April. But Mr Sims today warned that will not go far enough and said there was a need to make "payroll savings".

The force had already set up a review of its services, dubbed Programme Paragon, in a bid to save £50m over four years. But that was launched before impending government spending cuts of around 25 per cent.

And in a report to the West Midlands Police Authority Mr Sims warns that there will have to be redundancies to match the savings ordered by the Government.

Mr Sims has previously said it is possible the 14,000 staff could be reduced to 13,000 or 13,500 as part of Paragon but that now looks set to fall short of the savings target.

Fears have already been raised that as many as 1,500 officers may not be replaced when they leave or retire - and there is a recruitment freeze too.

In his report Mr Sims said: "The extent of the savings required will not be met by previous approaches to budgeting. Strategic organisational change of major business areas is unlikely to deliver the savings required at the rate they will be required for 2010/2011."