Exclusive: Dismay as the thin blue line gets even thinner

According to figures obtained by the Yorkshire Post, Humberside Police now employs 2,180 staff compared with 2,085 officers, making it one of only three in the country where warranted officers are in a minority.

At South Yorkshire Police officers form around 51 per cent of the force, while in North Yorkshire, the proportion is 53 per cent.

The reforms that have seen increasing numbers of civilians employed have been defended by chief officers who argue they are necessary because of budget constraints and allow more officers on the frontline.

But the federation has described it as an "alarming" trend which should be stopped before it destroys the quality and effectiveness of policing.

Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), are the most prominent of the civilian posts which also include dedicated detention officers, forensic officers, call handlers, crime analysts and data handlers.

Civilian staff are replacing officers in many roles in Humberside – including taking statements from victims of rape and child abuse – as part of its Business and Workforce Modernisation programme.

In a leaked internal report earlier this month, Det Supt Christine Kelk, Humberside's lead officer on sex crimes, called the use of civilians in rape cases "dangerous".

But a colleague, Chief Supt Colin Andrews, defended the policy, saying: "The issue for us is clearly in these economic times the budgets are restricted and in many roles there are certain tasks, such as taking statements, where police officers do not need their warranted powers; what is needed are the skills.

"By allowing staff to take statements we can increase the number of people doing investigations. These people are well trained and take good statements and we are very careful about what we deploy them to do."

The national federation said the ratio of police to staff has fallen sharply. In West Yorkshire the ratio fell from 69 per cent in favour of officers in 2000 to 58 per cent at the start of this year.

Staff also outnumber officers in Surrey, which employed 1,938 staff and 1,824 officers, and Northamptonshire, with 1,319 staff and 1,301 officers in 2009.

North Yorkshire Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell said his force was committed to maintaining frontline officers.

"The public is now better protected and we have seen significant reductions in crime," he added. "Police officers are better trained and better prepared to deal with unexpected and unplanned events."

But national police federation chairman Paul McKeever called on the Government to order a full review and ask the public what it wanted.

"At a time of financial restraint across the public sector, a rise in police staff numbers is absolute nonsense when the public want more police officers on the beat," he said.

"Instead we have increasing numbers of unaccountable, unidentifiable police staff who do not have the flexibility or resilience to give what is needed as an emergency service."

Humberside Police Federation chairman Steve Garmston said extensive civilianisation of police forces could prove to be a "false economy", while his South Yorkshire counterpart, Bob Pitt, said: "The thin blue line is very, very stretched."