Police officers in Essex were paid almost £76 million in overtime in the ten years up to 2020.

A Freedom of Information request revealed the cost of overtime hours worked by Essex Police officers from the April 2010 up to March last year.

The figures showed in the year from April 2019 until March 2020, officers with the force worked more than 317,000 hours of overtime at a cost of £8,313,579.

This was up on the period of April 2018 through to March 2019, when 281,386 hours of overtime were worked at a cost of £7,312,190.

But the figure is less then the period between April 2014 and March 2015, when officers worked 342,000 hours over time and were paid £8.44 million for the extra hours worked.

An Essex Police spokesman said: "Our officers regularly go above and beyond to catch criminals and keep people safe.

"It’s often the case that when extra government or other funding is made available to focus on specific areas of work, then officers and staff take on the work on top of their existing duties.

"So, overtime often pays for this additional work to protect people in Essex.

"In recent years, officers have dedicated many additional hours to bring serious criminals to justice – often at short notice, or with no notice at all.

"This has included investigating the deaths of 39 Vietnamese nationals inside a lorry trailer that arrived in the UK from Belgium and the murders of Nahid Almanea and Jim Attfield in Colchester, and several other complex murder investigations.

"Every officer and police staff member’s first consideration will always be to do whatever it takes to keep people safe and bring criminals to justice."