POLICE bosses are set to defy the government and raise their portion of council tax by double the capping limit to help fight serious crime.

Lancashire Consta-bulary is also planning £2.5million cuts to help fund £5million invest-ment next year.

Police Authority chiefs, said the 11.37per cent council tax increase was necessary to help plug the gap left by the doomed force merger with Cumbria.

But chairman Malcolm Doherty said the authority was not likely to face a Government spending cap as, because of the proposed cuts, overall expenditure would not exceed the six per cent limit.

Fifty officers will be moved from the armed response, dog handling motorway and support units to create extra detective roles.

The reduction in dog handlers from 35 to 21 officers, will see up to 19 dogs rehoused.

Police chiefs said the cuts were necessary so that officers could be redeployed to more front line services, such as protecting vulnerable people, counter terrorism and serious and organised crime.

Lancashire Police Authority's resources committee agreed to recommend the £5mill-ion investment in policing for next year.

Acting Chief Cons-table, Steve Finnigan, said: "There are significant new challenges facing us, particularly in the area of protective services i.e. the work we do to combat major crime, counter terrorism, protecting vulnerable people etc. that represent a real risk to our communities.

"We have, in recent years, had a big efficiency drive within the force to squeeze out everything we can from the money we already have, but it is my professional judgement that we need to invest more resources into our response to protective services if we are to deal with these new challenges properly."

Mr Doherty said: "We would not be recomm-ending this if we were not convinced of two things in particular; one, that the constabulary is doing everything it can to use its existing money as effectively as possible; and two, that we face significant new threats that have got to be confronted.

"We are determined not to damage the investment we have already made in neighbourhood policing, and so we have to solve the problem from elsewhere."

The council tax increase will take the "typical" Band B property charge for policing from £87.96 to £97.96 a year.

The money will go into three areas of expenditure to pay for more detectives to deal with major crime, more officers to provide a better response to calls for assistance from the public and more investment in technology, equipment and buildings to support the police in their work.

The committee has asked the Chief Constable to report to the full authority meeting on February 14.