The £200,000 boss who makes you pay his daily lunch bill: Essex Police chief claimed £32,000 in 'allowances' for food, internet and phone bills

Stephen Kavanagh claimed £32,000 above £200,000-plus salary
Essex Police confirmed it covered internet, phone and food bills
The money is provided without the need to produce receipts
Chief constable also accepted a huge pay rise of £26,000 last year

By Investigations Reporter For The Daily Mail

Published: 23:43 GMT, 7 August 2016 | Updated: 23:52 GMT, 7 August 2016

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Essex Police chief Stephen Kavanagh claimed £32,000 in 'allowances' above his salary last year to cover phone bills, medical insurance and food

A failing chief constable claims tens of thousands of pounds in ‘allowances’ for his designer home, daily food bills and private car.

Essex chief constable Stephen Kavanagh is one of the highest paid UK police bosses with a pay package of more than £200,000.

Yet the officer – whose force has been rated ‘inadequate’ at protecting the vulnerable – claimed £32,000 in ‘allowances’ on top of his salary last year.

Part of this was £17,600 for a ‘chief officer allowance’. The only reference to this payment was buried in a footnote in the force’s accounts.

When asked about it, a force spokesman clarified that the ‘chief officer allowance’ was for Mr Kavanagh’s home internet and phone bills, private medical insurance, and contributions to his lunches, coffees and snacks.

This money is provided without him needing to provide receipts or proof of expenditure.

Incredibly, this perk – also handed to members of his senior team – has not stopped Mr Kavanagh making extra ‘subsistence’ claims on his taxpayer-funded expenses.

These include dinner bills of up to £93 a time, and Tube tickets worth £4.50.

His expenses also include a £6,900 taxpayer-funded ‘housing allowance’ towards his sprawling five-bedroom home in Essex, which is worth nearly £1million and has a kitchen crafted by top designer Nicholas Anthony.

Finally, Mr Kavanagh accepted a huge pay rise last year of more than £26,000.

This increase could have paid the entire salary of one of the 571 Essex police officers who have lost their jobs since 2010 following budget cuts.

The chief constable’s total pay package last year, including the rise and allowances, was £237,000 – nearly £100,000 more than the Prime Minister’s salary.

Mr Kavanagh is just one of several police chiefs supplementing their salaries with ‘allowances’ for routine expenditure.

Many other forces had also buried these payments in their accounts, with little or no explanation.

Alan Pughsley, Kent chief constable, was given a £6,801 ‘housing allowance’ in 2014/15.

This went towards his £1million home in Chislehurst, an affluent area of south-east London.

The chief constable's home, pictured, is worth £1m but he still receives a £6,900 'allowance' towards the property

He also got a £4,508 ‘compensatory grant’ for the additional tax he had to pay as a result of benefiting from the housing allowance.

Durham Police chief Mike Barton took £5,904 in rent allowances last year, which includes the same compensatory grant.

Humberside Police’s failing chief Justine Curran also took a rent allowance towards her turreted Victorian house in East Riding of Yorkshire – despite having already received a £50,000 relocation bonus when she moved there in 2013.

Last night Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Housing allowances and free broadband are a scandalous way to spend taxpayers’ money when budgets are so tight.

‘This sort of largesse isn’t found in the private sector and so there seems little justification for these additional perks at taxpayers’ expense.

'They should be cut back to reflect the current need to make urgent savings.’

An Essex Police spokesman said the force ‘costs less per head of local population than any other force in the country despite dealing with more crime’, adding: ‘The force complies fully with all obligations on financial transparency and publishes detail online for public scrutiny.’

The force has also stated that Mr Kavanagh is ‘entitled to a housing allowance’ as he joined the police force before 1994.

A Kent Police spokesman said Mr Pughsley’s salary, allowance and annual leave ‘is in line with national guidance and independently set’.