Extra officers will be recruited this year at Lincolnshire Police after additional funding of £1.8 million was secured by the county’s police and crime commissioner.

PCC Marc Jones successfully applied to the Home Office for the additional cash and will make it available to the Chief Constable to spend this year and next.

The extra money will be used to support a number of new initiatives including the recruitment of 30 new officers in the Autumn and a greater than anticipated number of PCSOs.

Other spending plans include boosting the digital forensics unit by two extra posts to support the frontline with ever more complex investigations and strengthening the ARC team by four posts to work with prolific offenders to prevent their reoffending.

Further investments will be made to enhance our ability to protect children and vulnerable adults, and the ongoing Wellbeing programme to ensure police officers are able to provide the best quality of service to the public of Lincolnshire.

The £1.8m extra funding has been bolstered by additional Council Tax receipts of £400,000 – and with some £370,000 added from the carefully managed but dwindling reserves – means an extra £2.57m can be pumped into the policing budget this year.

This means the total budget available for policing and victims services has grown from £117m in 2016/17 to £128m this year – a 9.4 per cent increase over the last three years.

Mr Jones said he was always confident that he could secure extra funding for this year and was delighted to be able to make the cash available to the Chief Constable.

“There is no doubt that Lincolnshire still faces some long term financial challenges and costs have risen too, leaving a significant gap between current spending and the available budget which we continue to work on,” he said.

“The extra money will enable me to fund vital front line officers as well as some innovative and effective projects that will cut offending, keep communities safer, reduce the number of victims and improve the effectiveness of the force.

“But we cannot rest on our laurels. I will be spending the coming months working hard to persuade those in Westminster that a new funding formula is necessary to ensure Lincolnshire gets its fair share of income in the years ahead.”

Chief Constable Bill Skelly said: “I am delighted that as a result of this extra funding we will be able to recruit 30 officers later this year.

“This is above what we were expecting and allows us to strengthen the officer numbers, as the types of crime in our county become more complex and challenging.

“Our original financial position earlier this year meant that we had to make some savings, and these processes are now complete.

“I’m now really pleased that the Special Grant will enable us to invest in tools that help to prevent crime and provide an even better response to the public.

“I, alongside the PCC, will continue to fight for a fairer deal for Lincolnshire, which has historically been under-funded.

“We will do our utmost to make sure that policing in the county receives the money which allows us to keep people here safe.”