THAMES Valley Police has forced a council U-turn after it was refused cash for policing so hundreds of thousands of pounds could be spent on public art.

In April the Defence Infrastructure Organisation was given planning permission to build 1,900 homes, with a primary school, five shops, a community hall and space for businesses on surplus MOD land at Graven Hill.

As part of the approval, the MOD agreed with Cherwell District Council to pay £2.2m in developer contributions, called section 106, to fund a new bus service and projects like public art and highway improvements.

But the council rejected a request for £141,084 request from TVP.

At a planning meeting last week, Simon Dackombe, strategic planner for Thames Valley Police, criticised the council for being “obstructive” and said failure to allocate cash would “genuinely impact” on the level of police service in the district.

Mr Dackombe told councillors the development’s population would be in the region of 5,000 and based on current figures there would be about 1,000 incidents for police to deal with each year.

He said: “This additional demand has to be bourne from existing funding.

“We do not believe our modest request of around £140,000 in comparison to public art contributions of £400,000 will have such an impact on the viability of the scheme.”

Councillors agreed to re-negotiate with the MOD to reduce the public art contribution in favour of the police.

The MOD was unavailable to comment.