COUNCIL taxpayers in York and North Yorkshire are to be hit with a massive hike in what they have to pay for their police service - for the second year running.

Police chiefs are asking for an increase in the police precept - the police element of the council tax bill - of between 34 and 74 per cent, the Evening Press can reveal. That is on top of a 41 per cent increase this year.

The extra cash is needed to plug a budget "black hole" caused by a combination of rising police pension costs, historic underfunding, the rising costs of providing a modern police service - and a steady decrease in the proportion of the police budget funded by central government.

York Labour councillor Mick Brighton, a member of the North Yorkshire Police Authority, said that, in the past, the police service in North Yorkshire had been run "on a shoestring."

"The chickens are coming home to roost," he said. "The sky is black with chickens."

His Liberal Democrat York colleague on the authority, Nick Blitz, said that in the early 1990s North Yorkshire County Council had prided itself on being a low council tax authority. "But cheapest is often a false economy," he said.

The comments mark the beginning of a campaign by police chiefs and the police authority to persuade people to pay for the police service they say they deserve. It comes after the police authority learned it is to get only a three per cent increase in funding from central government - despite the costs of running a police service rising much more quickly than inflation.

Other reasons for the budgetary problems, according to the two York councillors, include:

The spiralling cost of police pensions, set to peak in the county in 2008

The rising cost of modern-day high-tech policing

The need to implement the government's new Police and Criminal Justice System initiatives

The need to build up the force's "reserve fund" - needed to help pay for the cost of major incidents - which was depleted following the Great Heck rail tragedy

Under the cheapest of four budget options presented to members of the North Yorkshire police authority by Chief Constable Della Cannings, the amount of "police precept" paid by someone living in a Band D house would rise from £88.59 a year to £119.20 - an increase of 34.5 per cent. That, according to Coun Blitz, would be "just to stand still and meet our legal obligations. There would be nothing there at all in terms of improving the police."

Under the most expensive option, the bill would rise to £154 a year - a 74 per cent hike. The other options would see the police precept rise by 44 per cent or 66.75 per cent.

Updated: 12:26 Wednesday, December 11, 2002