A SENIOR police figure in Cumbria has shot down calls for local forces to merge with others in a restructuring programme.

Peter McCall, the police and crime commissioner for the county emphasised the importance of keeping police local rather than being absorbed into larger forces as part of a forthcoming review of criminal justice.

His comments came after Martin Hewitt, one of Britain’s most senior police officers, said the system of 43 separate forces was ‘outdated’.

Mr Hewitt, head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said that now was the right time to rethink policing priorities and set out proposals addressing the national impact of having dozens of force areas.

But Mr McCall refused to offer his backing to the idea.

"He raises some interesting points and I do agree we need to look at policing as a total system," he said.

"We need to much-more joined up for national and regional crime.

"I think his argument about the system of 43 forces is understandable but I would disagree fundamentally with it.

"I'm absolutely adamant that local forces and accountability of police locally is very important.

"It's an old chestnut, amalgamation of police forces to make them bigger.

"I'm very strongly against the idea of our force merging with a larger force because I think the community would lose out.

"Inevitably police resources would get drawn into the area with the greater populations and the greater amounts of crime.

"The people of Cumbria would end up subsidising policing in Lancashire for example."

Mr McCall added: "The independence of local forces is something I believe in strongly and I would work very hard to fight for that."

Mr Hewitt stopped short of stating how he would want the reorganisation of forces to be carried out but he ruled out having a single consolidated national force and said that the political will to reform the system was lacking.

Mr Hewitt called on the government to include policing in the royal commission on criminal justice set out in the Queen’s Speech.

He told a national newspaper: "It’s always the elephant in the room.

“We are trying to make a complex system work on what is not the design that we would start with if we were starting from scratch.”

By the end of the year nearly 200 new police constables will be deployed across Cumbria, part of a national campaign to recruit 20,000 extra police.