Switch to Surrey Police Service impacts Langley Township\u2019s budget<\/p>\n
Published 5:00 am Friday, February 27, 2026<\/p>\n
Surrey\u2019s switch to a municipal police service is having a significant budget impact on Langley Township\u2019s policing costs, according to the draft budget released on Feb. 23.<\/p>\n
Policing costs are a major factor in the overall Township budget, with $60.59 million budgeted for the Township\u2019s share of the RCMP detachment it currently shares with Langley City.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a 3.6 per cent increase from 2025, meaning an additional $2.5 million. The Township\u2019s budget calls for adding two more Mounties at the end of the year.<\/p>\n
During Monday\u2019s council meeting, Mayor Eric Woodward highlighted one source of increasing RCMP costs \u2013 Surrey\u2019s transition to a municipal police force.<\/p>\n
Surrey is switching from an RCMP detachment to the Surrey Police Service, although some RCMP officers remain in place as the new SPS works to hire a full complement of officers.<\/p>\n
But Surrey was by far the largest RCMP detachment in the province, and as it\u2019s shutting down, that means costs for provincial RCMP administration \u2013 B.C.\u2019s RCMP is known as E Division \u2013 are being spread among all the remaining RCMP-served municipalities.<\/p>\n
The Township will have to pay $46,579 per RCMP officer towards E-Division\u2019s administrative costs this year, the budget briefing for council said. That is $7.8 million in total, and an eight per cent increase, or $578,850 more than last year.<\/p>\n
The other issue that was discussed by council Monday was the widening gap between the number of Mounties the Township is willing to fund and the number who are actually deployed.<\/p>\n
The Township funds 167.65 RCMP officers, and the City currently funds 54.35, for a total detachment strength of 222 officers.<\/p>\n
But in 2025, the total number of officers actually working was 121.32 for the Township, and 40.71 for the City, for a total of 162.<\/p>\n
Councillor Blair Whitmarsh asked about the difference between authorized and actual detachment strength.<\/p>\n
Township staff noted that numbers can fall because officers are away on long-term leave, or because they retire or are transferred and are not quickly replaced by new transfers or newly trained officers.<\/p>\n
Whitmarsh asked why the Township was considering adding more officers this year if they are running about 40 fewer than they have currently budgeted for.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we start decreasing the authorized strength, we may decrease the actual strength as well,\u201d said Chan Kooner, the Township\u2019s chief administrative officer.<\/p>\n
The recent stats also showed that the Langley RCMP\u2019s actual strength declined sharply last year. In 2024, the Langley detachment had an actual strength of 174 officers, and in 2023, it was 178.<\/p>\n
When the Township funds positions that aren\u2019t filled, money can go towards overtime budgets for existing officers. Anything that isn\u2019t used is divided up, with half going into an RCMP reserve fund, and half going into general Township reserves.<\/p>\n
The Township is currently separating its shared detachment from the City, to create two independent detachments in the future, but is not considering a switch to a municipal force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Switch to Surrey Police Service impacts Langley Township\u2019s budget Published 5:00 am Friday, February 27, 2026 Surrey\u2019s switch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":{"0":"post-509427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-surrey","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-surrey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}