A POLICE commissioner has criticised a recent decision to award two fire officers £35,000 pay rises, saying if she is given oversight of the fire service she will instil transparency over senior salaries.

North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner Julia Mulligan was commenting on a recent announcement by the Home Office designed to increase transparency around police chief officer employment, which includes publishing police chiefs’ pay packages online.

Mrs Mulligan welcomed the move, citing controversial pay settlements awarded to previous chief police officers with the force by the now defunct Police Authority.

Mrs Mulligan and Chief Constable Dave Jones published a report in 2013 into allowance packages paid to former Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell and former Deputy Chief Constable Adam Briggs.

They requested some money be repaid, but decided against pursuing Mr Maxwell and Mr Briggs through the courts for approximately £100,000.

Since then, the police force has published the salaries of its chief officers on its website.

Now Mrs Mulligan has pledged to ensure similiar transparency on pay deals and other issues within North Yorkshire’s fire service if her proposal to take over governance of the organisation is approved.

The fire service has said its pay rises are the result of two temporary assistant chief fire officer posts being turned into permanent roles and two existing staff being promoted into these posts from elsewhere in the service.

But the Police Commissioner said in a statement it was “mystifying” how the pay rises arose, especially as frontline firefighter roles were being cut.

“I very much welcome the measures announced on Chief Officer pay transparency,” she stated.

“This is something that I have been championing for years and have spoken to the Home Office about many times.

“It may remind people of the mess I inherited when I first became PCC around Chief Police Officer allowance packages which had been paid by the former Police Authority, with seemingly scant reason and with no transparency whatsoever. And sadly, those issues were not unique to North Yorkshire.

“However, similarities clearly exist in the fire service.

“Recently, two Assistant Chief Fire Officers in North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service each received a £35,000 pay increase, coming at a time when the service needed to save millions of pounds and plans were being made to cut frontline firefighter roles.”

A spokesperson for North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said: “In December 2016 the Fire Authority approved a permanent senior manager structure. This included making two temporary Assistant Chief Fire Officer posts permanent, and two individuals were promoted into these posts from other posts within the service.”