Police numbers 'unsustainable'

The Home Office's adviser on policing, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, said it was not necessary to have 140,000 officers, adding that many jobs could be done by civilians instead.

Labour's investment in police numbers has been trumpeted by successive home secretaries as one of the party's most important law-and-order achievements.

But Sir Ronnie concluded: "There is widespread recognition amongst the leadership of the service that maintaining police numbers at their current level is not sustainable over the course of the next three years. I am persuaded that we would not be making the most effective use of the resources dedicated to the police if police officer numbers were sustained at their current level."

He refused to speculate how many officers could be lost, adding that more work needed to be done on what the basic minimum would be.

Sir Ronnie's report, which was extensively leaked earlier this week, also proposed a number of sweeping changes to police bureaucracy. Taking up his recommendations, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced the immediate scrapping in three pilot areas of the lengthy "stop and account" form, which officers have to complete every time they stop someone in the street.

The form - which takes up to 30 minutes to fill in - could be abandoned nationally by the end of the year, she added. Instead, police radios will be used to record any encounter and officers will give out business cards to those stopped. Separately, chief constables will be encouraged to streamline the forms used to record details in "stop-and-search" incidents, Ms Smith said.

Sir Ronnie's report said that moves to strip back red tape could release up to seven million hours of police time every year, the equivalent of 3,500 officers.

A new, two-tier crime recording system should be introduced, with serious crimes continuing to be noted down in great detail while paperwork on less serious offences would be "much more concise", he said. The two-tier move could save about 40,000 hours of police time a year in just one medium-sized police force, he indicated.

The report also recommended radical changes to the way police forces in England and Wales are funded, which could dramatically alter the amount of cash some areas of the country receive for crime fighting.