There are three significant risks to the financial strategy:
- the continued threat from terrorism and the need to respond to any future incidents, the costs of which could be significant and could undermine the delivery of the Strategic Plan
- the ability to manage growth in the rail industry (currently at 6-7% per annum) throughout the life of this plan. This could lead to a growth in passengers and the railways of 25%. It is unlikely that BTP will be able to deliver the same levels of operational performance faced with this increase in demand
- the relationship between the stock market and the pension funds, which can lead to major swings in employer and employee contribution levels, and can therefore undermine BTP’s pensions funding assumptions
BTP is seeking to mitigate these risks by inviting Government to accept the responsibility for the first and by reviewing its rolling three-year financial plan on an annual basis in relation to the last two.
Other significant risks include:
- the delivery of the call handling project
- the management of the consequences of the equal pay audit
- the lack of sufficient custody facilities in BTP
- the ability to secure movement of officers in and out of BTP because of different pension arrangements in BTP, Home Office and Scottish forces
- the loss of Government grant for forensic funding
- the failure to meet Government targets in relation to persistent young offenders BTP has plans to mitigate all these risks, but each will have the impact of putting it under greater financial pressure.