Police forces are spending almost £40 million a year on what their critics describe as spin-doctors and news management, according to figures obtained by The Times.

PR expenditure has risen by 13 per cent over the past two years at a time when police budgets are under pressure and seven forces are facing the threat of capping. The money would be more than enough to fund the part of the annual police pay rise withheld by the Government, or to put an extra 1,400 officers on the streets.

Police forces have stepped up spending on marketing since the Home Office began measuring their performance against public perceptions of crime. Senior officers insist that most marketing is aimed at crime prevention and providing accurate information to inform the public. But there are concerns that forces are withholding information about serious crime in an effort to manipulate the news agenda.

Clive Chamberlain, chairman of Dorset Police Federation, said: “Press offices are a necessary conduit for information, but officers all over the country are concerned that there is a lot of carefully laundered PR and that money should be spent on policing.”

The figures were collated by The Times after a freedom of information request submitted to all police forces in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Four forces, including Strathclyde, the largest in Scotland, have still failed to reply. Several others provided incomplete, inconsistent and inaccurate data.

Those that did answer the request spent £30.2 million, but an estimate of total expenditure by all 52 forces puts the overall figure at £39.4 million. The research was carried out under the supervision of Heather Brooke, who won a High Court victory last week forcing MPs to disclose their expenses on second homes.

Scotland Yard, with a PR bill of more than £6 million, is the biggest spender and had one of the highest levels of spending per head of the population. Boris Johnson, the new Mayor of London, promised in his election manifesto to cut the Yard’s PR spend and “redirect £3.1 million from marketing and spin to frontline policing”. The Police Service of Northern Ireland spends 99p on PR for every member of the public it serves. However, while both the Metropolitan Police and the PSNI have cut spending in the past two years, there have been sharp rises in marketing expenditure among small rural forces. In Cumbria the communications budget has risen by 125 per cent since 2005, while spending by Dyfed Powys police rose by 77 per cent. Dorset constabulary, among the smallest in the country, has one of the highest levels of spending for its population, at 72p per person.

Paul Breakwell, head of corporate communications at Dorset, said that rising costs were due to the expansion of neighbourhood policing: “There has been a clear investment in assuring effective and targeted communication with communities to support the fantastic job our officers do in making Dorset a county that not only is safer, but feels safer, too.” He added that some of the costs had been met with money recovered from criminals through the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Northumbria Police, which has increased its PR spend by 55 per cent in two years, has faced complaints that it distorts the picture of crime by refusing to release details of serious incidents in its area. David Warcup, Northumbria’s Deputy Chief Constable, said, however, that marketing was aimed at supporting operational activity.

Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, was fiercely critical of the increasing spending on marketing and PR. “Many police spin-doctors are paid more than policemen and women and they never put their lives on the line. This excessive spending on PR is not only wrong, it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money,” he said.

PR spending by police force per 100,000 of population

Top Five

Northern Ireland £99,501

London, Metropolitan £85,629

Northamptonshire £80,138

Devon & Cornwall £72,670*

Merseyside £68,189


Bottom Five

Derbyshire £12,566

Dyfed-Powys £19,088

Durham £20,193

South Yorkshire £20,818*

Lincolnshire £20,934

*average of three years

Times Recommends

• Sarah Brown and the ladies who tweet
• Open letter to a hero's daughters, from the daughter of a murdered officer
• Transplant drug extends life in mice