Avon and Somerset Police pays out around £65,000 a year to "handfuls" of informants to help crack crimes.

Chief constable Andy Marsh said the sum was a "minuscule" part of the force's £328.5million budget and is the right thing to do.

A freedom of information request revealed that between 2014/15 and 2018/19 the force paid informants – technically known as "covert human intelligence sources" – £322,999.52, or around £65,000 a year.

Speaking on BBC Radio Bristol on September 17, Chief Constable Marsh said: "It's not for everyday policing. If 500 catalytic converters have been stolen over five months, I think it would be worth paying someone £500 to understand who was doing that, in a way that led us to gather evidence to lock them up.

"It's a tactic we use incredibly sparingly to deal with serious and organised crime, not trivial stuff."

Chief Constable Marsh said the amount informants get paid is a "relatively small amount of money" and "in terms of our overall budget it's a minuscule spend", adding: "It needs to be proportionate to the sort of people you're dealing with.

"We've only got handfuls of people registered as informants.

"If we can have some information that would lead to the recovery of a viable firearm, that's surely something worth doing. If we could have information that would stop child sexual exploitation, that's surely worth doing, or solve a murder."

He said it was the same as Crimestoppers offering £5,000 for information about a racially aggravated assault on an NHS worker and is the "right thing to do".