A POLICE chief spent £40,000 on self-promotion with a single company – including £200 on a giant cheque.

Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Katy Bourne placed 36 separate orders for promotional items with Lewes design company Proworx since here election in 2012, a community bloggers discovered.

Blogger Gabriel Webber said that the commissioner was spending hundreds of pounds on promotional pens, “reflective safety bands” and Youtube video blog uploads at the a time as her community fund was telling good causes they could not receive all the money they had requested.

Former rival candidates said her use of public funding would give Ms Bourne a distinct advantage when she stands for re-election in 2016.

But Ms Bourne’s office defended the expenditure as completely “transparent”.

Sussex Police Federation secretary Mark White said: “We are acutely aware of the police service needing to account for every penny in the current financial climate and that would also extend to the Police and Crime Commissioner.

“She is publically accountable to the people of Sussex for her finances so I would hope that she will not have treated any expenditure lightly.”

Former candidate Ian Chisnall said: “It is in her interest to make people aware of who she is and what she is doing and that is the advantage she will have over anybody who stands against her.

“I do feel it is easy to criticise people in public life for what they spend, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.”

The Police and Crime Commissioner’s Safer in Sussex Community Fund had donated more than £400,000 in its first year.

Since the fund launched last December, mentoring charity Band of Brothers received £40,000 of a £50,000 bid, the Deans Youth Drama Club received £1,000 of a £3,200 application, and Disability Hate Crime Awareness Day received a third of the £1,610 organisers applied for.

A spokeswoman for the crime commissioner said: “Since the Safer in Sussex Community Fund launched in December 2013, £400,000 has been made available by the Police and Crime Commissioner to support local projects that aim to reduce crime and improve community safety.

“The Commissioner is committed to complete transparency in the way that she makes decisions and spends public money.”

To view the commissioner’s expenditure visit www.sussex-pcc.gov.uk