Drop in force overtime cost

THE overtime bill for Lothian and Borders Police has fallen during the last nine months but the cost of officers doing extra hours still topped £4 million.

New figures showed overtime costs fell by £200,000 between April and December last year, compared to £4.2m for the same period a year before.

Overtime payments represented 4.3 per cent of the total salary costs for officers during that period, which was a drop on the previous year’s figure of 4.6 per cent.