It’s a pity that Hertfordshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner’s expensive PR team doesn’t include anyone with a working knowledge of basic economics and Government finance.

You carried last week (A waste of money, October 12) the story of our commissioner’s failed attempt to gather the county’s fire service under his control. A Freedom of Information request had elicited the disclosure that the cost to the public purse of his failed vanity jaunt was £175,000. To cover this expenditure, you report that a government grant of £125,000 was received ‘which Mr. Lloyd’s office said brought the net cost to £50,000’. No, Mr Lloyd, the net cost was still £175,000; who does he think provided ‘government money’? The fairies? No, we the taxpayers have stumped up to cover all the cost of your incompetence.

I wonder, though, whether the person who used this specious justification was the same person who was in charge of the commissioner’s PR team when the bills came in after the 2013 Bilderberg conference fiasco? Readers may recall that the world’s financial movers and shakers chose to have their conference that year in Watford. The organisers gave an ex gratia payment of £500,000 to Herts police to cover the cost of policing outside the conference venue. There was no specific security concern, but Hertfordshire police decided to call in reinforcements from around the country and in doing so ran up a monster bill of £1.3million. This was a woeful over-reaction to a non-existent threat (the number of arrests was in single figures, all for minor public order offences). But someone then had to foot the bill of about £800,000. The commissioner tried to bail himself out by applying to the Home Office for a special grant, but this was turned down, the Home Office considering that unnecessary resources had been deployed. So we, the people of Hertfordshire, had to cover the cost. The commissioner’s office, announcing this, said that the Home Office’s decision ‘does not cause us immediate problems or require us to make further immediate savings on policing. Ultimately this money will come from our reserves…’ So, once again, that’s all OK, move along now, nothing to see.

I wonder how many police officers have had their jobs cut as a result of this incompetence? And I also wonder how many posts from the commissioner’s highly paid personal entourage have been cut following this blundering bobby’s boobs?

Anthony Bramley-Harker

Hibbert Avenue Watford