CLOSE working between Dorset and the Devon and Cornwall police forces will continue – despite a full merger between the forces being called off.

Councillors heard this week that the cost of the failed merger bid has still not been assessed. The special unit set up to bring about closer working had now disbanded.

Police and Crime Commissioner Martyn Underhill promised councillors meeting in Dorchester on Tuesday that the figures for the exercise would be produced as soon as they were calculated.

“The merger was the most obvious way to protect police budgets. We now won’t have the extra 100 police officers but we won’t stand still and we were not relying on the merger for future sustainability. We had budgeted for it as if it wouldn’t happen, and it hasn’t,” he told the county’s police and crime panel.

He said that the forces continued to work together in more than thirty different areas although work on some ongoing projects had now been stopped.

Regular meetings between officer and staff would continue, he said, and there would also be talks about closer working with other forces, including Hampshire police and the Wiltshire and Dorset fire and rescue service.

Mr Underhill said that with eight years of no grant increase from the Government the search for savings and efficiencies would have to continue fir the Dorset force. He said the force now had far fewer officers than it did in 1981 despite an annual increase in reports of crime and the growth of incidents of drug-related violence and dealing.

He revealed that the end of the merger would also mean advertising for a new Chief Constable, James Vaughan, having only been appointed on an interim basis to continue the merger process.

The position will be advertised next week with an interview panel sitting in mid-January.