Council taxpayers across Wiltshire will almost certainly be asked to pay 6.5 per cent extra for their police service next year.

The county force’s Police and Crime Commissioner Philip Wilkinson told councillors from both Wiltshire and Swindon councils who sit on the Police and Crime Panel he intends to take up the government’s maximum allowed increase in the police council tax precept of £15 for the average Band D property.

And while that equates to a 6.5 per cent increase for payers in other bands – Mr Wilkinson pointed out it still means Wiltshire will have the lowest police precept of all the forces in the South West.

And the PPC’s financial director Clive Barker told members of the panel it would still leave next year’s budget £3.1m short.

The increase which will see Band Payer pay a total of £156 next year to the police will raise £70m of the council’s budget of £146m. But Mr Barker’s calculations show increasing costs, especially inflation and other requirements meant the council needed to spend £149m in 2023-24.

And one avenue to saving £3m – cutting police officers – is closed to Mr Barker. He said: “A large part of the government grant is ringfenced for the uplift in the number of officers [as part of the government’s drive to recruit 20,000 more police officers].

“We will lose that ring-fenced funding if we don’t bring more in – it’s about £17,000 per officer and if we don’t hit our target, it will cost us £2.2m.2

One solution is to actually increase the number of officers as a proportion of the force’s workforce, Mr Barker said. He explained that fully trained officers are more flexible and can be deployed to more tasks than either civilian staff or PCSOs.

He added: “Often we recruit someone as a PCSO who says they will do it for 18 months or so and then apply to be an officer.

"We think it makes sense to cut out that 18 months and recruit them as officers from the start.”

If the plan succeeds it means by the end of March 2024 more than 50 per cent of the service’s workforce should be officers and not civilian staff or PCSOs.

Wiltshire Councillor Elizabeth Threlfall pointed out that with a lower precept base than neighbouring police forces, the same £15 increase would be a higher percentage of increase in Wiltshire, but actually a lower increase in cash terms.

Mr Wilkinson said he intended to put the £15 increase to the public for consultation.