Surrey Police and Surrey Police Authority members are standing firm in calling for guarantees of funding from the Government about force restructuring - before any decisions are taken.

Last week, the Home Secretary Charles Clarke began the process of changing the existing 43 police force structure in England and Wales by announcing that he wants to create the first three regional forces; West Midlands (merger of Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Mercia and West Midlands), North East (merger of Cleveland, Durham and Northumbria), and Wales (merger of Dyfed-Powys, Gwent, North Wales and South Wales). He is also proposing that Cheshire and Merseyside merge, alongside Cumbria and Lancashire. Greater Manchester Police is to be allowed to remain a stand-alone force. Each of the regions has until February 24 to decide if it will voluntarily merge - if not, the Home Secretary is expected to use his powers to lay orders imposing mergers before Parliament.

More decisions on forces are expected in the next few weeks, based on the recommendations to the Home Secretary of a team of consultants, acting for the Home Office. Several of the consultants visited Surrey Police Headquarters recently to interview members of the Force, and provided positive feedback that our assessment of a cost to merge of at least £29 million was detailed and prudent.

Surrey has not yet heard back from the Home Secretary about our proposal to be a stand-alone force with improved funding and greater autonomy over workforce structure. It is likely that Chief Constable Bob Quick and Chair of Surrey Police Authority Liz Campbell will be invited to meet the Home Secretary to discuss the way forward next month.

Analysis provided to the Home Secretary in December showed that Surrey could meet the Government's requirements to boost resilience (to cope with cross border crime, terrorism and major incidents) if we were funded appropriately for a force which borders the country's capital city. Surrey, like many forces in the South East, has been under-funded by the Government for the last four years due to an unfair funding formula, which decants funding to areas of higher crime and deprivation. The formula takes no account of issues such as cross border criminality emerging from London, the costs of policing high traffic volumes on the M25 and the M3 and having a role to ensure the security of two of the country's biggest airports. Surrey is funded worse than rural forces hundreds of miles from London.

Liz Campbell, Chair of the Surrey Police Authority, said: "All we want is to be funded appropriately, and not penalised for being a high performing force which is keeping crime low. Surrey will receive £87 per head of population for the coming year - one of the lowest in the country. This is compared to the national average of £106 per head. We require additional central grant of £21m. An increase in our central funding to just the average would avoid all the upheaval of a forced merger, which we estimate will cost around £29 million, with ongoing revenue implications.

Mrs Campbell continued: "We have asked the Home Office to clarify whether they will subsidise restructuring to ensure costs are not levied on local tax-payers, but we have had no assurances as yet.

"In a week when we are forced to increase the police precept, we are still asking the Government who will pay for restructuring and how local communities will hold the police to account? We are committed to ensuring efficient and effective policing for Surrey, and there must be demonstrable benefits for the local community if any change is to be made," she added.

Chief Constable Bob Quick said: "We welcomed the news from the Prime Minister recently that mergers would not be forced through, although it now seems that the Home Secretary remains keen for mergers to take place. We have said consistently throughout this debate that the only issue for Surrey is funding and not size or structure. Our chronic funding gap must be addressed if our performance is not to be put at risk in the next few years. We have generated around £30 million in efficiency savings over the past six years, but we are still forced to plunder reserves and make even more aggressive efficiencies to bridge our chronic shortfall in funding.

"We remain committed to our neighbourhood policing style and recognise the links between neighbourhood policing and more serious crime, but we are operating in a tighter and tighter financial climate. Ultimately, our service will suffer if we are unable to provide the policing that people in Surrey deserve and expect. We want to ensure we are making the right decisions for our residents."