£28,400 for a shower !

An inquiry has been launched after it emerged that North Yorkshire Police spent more than £28,000 to refurbish a shower in the chief constable's office. The North Yorkshire Police Authority's monitoring officer has been asked by Chief Constable Della Cannings to carry out a "thorough review" of the work.

MP Phil Willis - a long-standing critic of the force's finances - said the home secretary must also investigate. "This is a fiasco too far," the Lib Dem MP for Harrogate & Knaresborough added.

He said the budget for the new shower had originally been £6,000. But the cost of the project spiralled to five times the original estimate, including £15,000 spent on plumbing, £4,000 on electrics and more than £5,000 for rebuilding in an existing shower room. The floor, ceiling, painting and furniture also cost about £1,000 each.

"I am absolutely staggered that to actually put a shower in a building that already had a shower is going to cost £28,400," Mr Willis told the BBC. "Whether it is gold-plated or one that Imelda Marcos would have been proud of I don't know, but the cost to the taxpayers is unacceptable."

The police authority's monitoring officer, Jeremy Holderness, will look at how the bathroom revamp work was handled from start to finish. His inquiry is expected to last three to four weeks.