Crime chief hits back over bad value claims

But tsar Julia Mulligan has branded the “misleading” report from a spending pressure group as a cheap attempt at headline grabbing - and insists the taxpayer’s better off with her.

The Taxpayer’s Alliance report claims the commissioner cost her electorate £2.73 each in 2013/2014 - almost four times as much as the cheapest force Thames Valley.

They say her office is the second most expensive in Britain, but she said comparing her rural patch to an urban area with two million people is simply “unfair”

“This is yet another misleading press release from the Taxpayers Alliance, merely intended to grab some headlines,” said the Conservative commissioner.

“Their information is also two years out of date and therefore misrepresentative.”

The report claimed that the crime commissioner’s office was £412,000 more expensive than that of the police authorities she replaced, a claim the commissioner completely reject - even stating it will be £500,000 cheaper by the time the election comes around next year.

She adds that a lot of that cash is being pumped back into policing, but the report criticises the amount of money the country;’s 41 commissioners are spending on PR staff.

In North Yorkshire, two staff are employed to promote the commissioners work. A Scarborough News investigation also recently found that she’d billed the taxpayer to the tune of several hundred pounds on a photographer just to snap her carrying out her job. And Jonathan Isaby of the Taxpayer’s Alliance said: “Commissioners who stock their offices with PR staff must be asked whether that money wouldn’t have been better spent on bobbies.”