The Conservative boss of Thames Valley Police spent twice as much money on his election campaign than his nearest rival who he narrowly beat after a super tight race.

Matthew Barber splashed £19,659.46 in the run-up to his re-election as the police and crime commissioner (PCC) for Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes and Oxfordshire on May 2 this year.

A PCC sets a police force’s priorities and budget and has the responsibility of appointing the chief constable, as well as holding the force to account.

Barber, who is now serving a second term in the job, emerged from the election with a razor-thin majority of 2,343 over Labour’s Tim Starkey – just 0.5 per cent of the 448,000 votes cast across Thames Valley.

Starkey, an experienced barrister, spent £9,760.25 on the campaign – less than half of Barber’s total – while Liberal Democrat Tim Bearder who finished third, spent £7,251.72.

Independents Ben Holden-Crowther and Russell Fowler, who finished fourth and fifth, spent just £44.83 and £787.20 respectively, according to returns the five candidates filed with West Berkshire Council, which were seen by this newspaper.

Bearder, a councillor and former BBC journalist, claimed that the Tories’ huge spending on the PCC race was significant, given that it was such a close contest.

He told this newspaper: “I’m not at all surprised that the Conservative police and crime commissioner spent almost three times more than the Liberal Democrats and twice as much as the Labour challenger. In a tight race like the one we had in the Thames Valley that really matters.”

The returns for the three main party candidates show that they shelled out for Facebook advertising, staff costs, and the printing of leaflets, flyers and posters.

Barber also expensed £650 on shooting campaign videos, as well as £900 on ‘personal’ costs for driving across the Thames Valley in his own car to speak to voters.

The PCC told this newspaper: “Raising funds for the election campaign are essential to connecting with as many people as possible.

“Quite rightly there is no public money that goes into campaigning and so I have raised money through voluntary donations. Of course I would have liked to raise more money, to be able to reach more people.”

In April, before the election, Barber told this newspaper that he would be ‘lucky if he raised 10 grand’ and would be ‘chuffed’ to reach that figure, while also admitting that he had spent a ‘fair bit’ of his own money on the campaign.

Despite his pessimism about the funding he could raise, the Conservative candidate nearly doubled what he hoped for, although his total campaign expenses were still less than five per cent of the maximum £415,290 allowed in Thames Valley.

Like his Labour and Lib Dem rivals, Barber secured a large chunk of his cash through donations from local political parties, with he and Starkey also topping up their funds with small amounts of their own money.

Holden-Crowther told this newspaper: “I was pretty shocked to discover that the main political parties spent so much money at this relatively low-profile election, and I think the voting results clearly show they received a relatively poor return on investment.”

By contrast, the young independent won 46,853 votes from across the Thames Valley, despite only forking out £44.83 of his own money on his campaign and not receiving a single donation.

He added: “The quality and sincerity of your campaign is demonstrably more important than the money you spend, as illustrated by my truly feeble £44.83 resulting in almost 50,000 votes.”

Fowler, the other independent, claimed that the money Barber spent on his campaign ‘certainly helped’ when asked about whether his vast outspend of the other candidates had secured the PCC his narrow re-election victory.

Meanwhile, Bearder suggested that changes to the way people voted in this year’s PCC election may have had an even greater effect on the outcome than how much the candidates spent.

PCC elections previously used the supplementary vote system, where voters could make a first and second choice vote, but this time around, voters only selected a single candidate on the ballot paper.

Bearder said: “This electoral trickery saved at least eight of their PCCs who would very likely not have won under the old system. In the Thames Valley the Conservatives won by just 0.5 per cent.”

He added: “I think we should all be incredibly angry about what happened, the Conservatives used their money and power to tip the election in their favour.

“I sincerely hope that the new Labour government, whose candidates lost out so spectacularly in the PCC elections as a result, will recognise that money and a lack of a democratic election system weakens the mandate of elected representatives and undermines people’s confidence in politics.”