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A political row over next year's West Midlands Police budget bore all the hallmarks of the proverbial two bald men fighting over a comb.

Labour Police Commissioner Bob Jones had to persuade a group of politicians from across the West Midlands not to veto his plans for a three per cent rise in the police precept on council tax.

Now that the Government has decided that the top council tax rise before a referendum is two per cent, this increase to the force’s budget seems doomed.

Bearing in mind the Government grant covers almost £500 million of the constabulary’s £560 million annual budget there is very little dependence on the council tax income anyway.

So the 643,000 West Midlands households are currently billed an average £102.43 a year for policing and Mr Jones wanted this to rise to £105.50 – which, although an inflation busting three per cent increase, amounts to about 6p a week he argued.

But Conservative councillors on the crime panel, Birmingham’s Deirdre Alden and Solihull’s Ken Meeson argued that this would impact on ‘hard pressed families’ and the Commissioner should find the money elsewhere – perhaps in the reserves which the force treasurer had already admitted are ‘embarrassingly high’.

Coun Alden argued for a modest 1.5 per cent increase, so that’s 3p per week, and using £900,000 from the reserves to plug the gap.

Setting aside that it is rarely advised to use cash reserves to fund revenue spending, Bob pointed out the £150 million reserves are already earmarked for various things including redundancy and equal pay, capital spending, contingencies – such as riots – and that he plans to spend about £60 million on a recruitment and training drive. The money is clearing buring a hole in their collective pockets.