HAMPSHIRE’S chief constable has attacked a shock decision to freeze fees for gun licences – describing it as a “significant setback” to improving public safety.

Andy Marsh wrote to the Home Secretary to protest after No.10 blocked a proposed rise from £50 to £88, designed to help cover the enormous bill run up by police forces.

Hampshire constabulary is left with a staggering shortfall of £545,490 every year because fees fail to cover the cost of processing applications, according to a new analysis.

The increase – the first since 2001 – was intended to be the first step towards “full cost recovery”, after years of pressure from the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

But a leaked email revealed that No.10 had refused to sign off on the plan, taking even Home Office civil servants by surprise.

Now Hampshire’s top police officer – who is the lead police chief in England and Wakes on firearms and gun licensing – has warned Home Secretary Theresa May, that “significant improvements” to gun licensing are at stake.

In a letter released to the Daily Echo, Mr Marsh wrote: “This decision is a significant setback and has been made even when a general consensus was agreed with all the key stakeholders, who supported a moderate rise in fees.

“Firearms licensing has not seen an increase in fees since 2001, with the current payments significantly below the actual cost to forces, which I believe is a barrier for further significant improvements.”

In Hampshire, in the year to March 2014, there were 1,291 applications for guns (cost £50) and a further 2,199 renewals (cost £40).

In the leaked email, Home Office civil servants told various people involved in the negotiations on fees that they have been ordered to stop work on the issue.

No 10 declined to comment on claims that Mr Cameron – who has hunted stags on his stepfather-in-law’s 20,000-acre shooting estate – had intervened personally.

Labour said it was writing to Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, asking him to investigate whether the Cameron family's financial interests amount to a conflict of interest.

Diana Johnson MP, the party’s crime spokeswoman, said: “David Cameron promised that police resources would be spent on the frontline. But now he’s protecting a multimillionpound subsidy for his friends in the shooting community, while across the country thousands of police officers and PCSOs are being lost.”