VILLAGERS claim police in Darlington are too busy dealing with town centre problems to serve rural areas effectively.

The claim was made during a community police meeting at Hurworth Grange.

Peter Foster, Hurworth parish councillor, raised concerns about poor police response to village incidents at weekends.

He claimed a resident who contacted police one weekend was told officers were too busy dealing with incidents in the town on Friday and Saturday nights to go to the villages.

Coun Foster also said that several residents had not received adequate responses to their 999 emergency calls.

He said police had been known to take hours to respond, and on occasions had not responded at all.

"The system seems to have virtually fallen through and we feel very cut off in a rural area," he said. "Neighbourhood Watch is only as good as its communication and if that is difficult it weakens the whole system."

But Insp Sue Collingwood said that although officers were often busy in the town on weekends, because of the nature and number of the incidents, it did not mean that they would not respond to an urgent situation in the villages.

"Unfortunately, sometimes difficult decisions have to be made," she said.

"Each incident is judged on its merits but whenever a call is made we do our best to respond as soon as soon we possibly can.

"I suspect that whoever took the call on that particular weekend was being completely honest with the resident about the chances of getting a police officer out there at the time.

"But I would prefer honesty, rather than unrealistically promising a response that just isn't available."

Insp Paul Unsworth said that all 999 calls are recorded, so the message could not be mislaid or overlooked. Each 999 call was guaranteed a response but incidents had to be prioritised.

"We never lose the record of a 999 incident and we are constantly aware of the need to respond effectively in rural areas," he said.

Coun Foster also expressed concern over rumours that rural police stations in the borough were to close overnight. He said: "It used to be that if you were walking along at night and there was some trouble or someone was bothering you, you could walk to the police station and get help. If they are not open, what are people supposed to do?"

Insp Unsworth stressed that rural police stations were not closing down overnight. He said the front desks would be shut, but the stations would still be manned throughout the night.

"We found that less than 1pc of all reports were given at the front desk overnight," he said