ONE of the region's police forces will unveil the results of an investigation into the role of police community support officers (PCSOs) in the next few weeks.

The North Yorkshire force has been conducting a review of the role of PCSOs - who are intended to provide frontline support for regular uniformed officers.

PCSOs, which were introduced by former Home Secretary David Blunkett, have been criticised as, although they can carry out a number of duties, they do not have powers of arrest.

There has been a fresh debate over their use, after a video clip being circulated on YouTube emerged, showing two PCSOs in a unnamed location being abused by youths.

Sergeant Mark Botham, chairman of the North Yorkshire Police Federation, said his force had been conducting a review of PCSOs and their powers and it was due to report back soon.

He said: "We have no problem with hardworking men and women who are prepared to fill this role. They should be employed in addition to and not to replace trained operational police officers."

Chief Inspector Gary Gamesby, of Cleveland Police, said: "We are not aware of any particular problems involving our PSCOs over and above the regular difficulties they may encounter during the ordinary course of policing.

"PCSOs are part of the family and receive full support from their colleagues."

According to Home Office figures, as at March last year, there were 147 PCSOs in North Yorkshire, 114 in Cleveland, 142 in Durham and 248 in Northumbria.

Metin Enver, a spokesman for the Police Federation, which represents uniformed officers, said: "We have no objection to PCSOs being used as eyes and ears, but we are also finding that they are being asked do a range of other activities, which we say is the start of criminal investigation work.

"When they do stumble across things, they do not have the powers to deal with them. They then have to call for back-up from uniformed colleagues.

"The criminal fraternity also know that they can get away with certain types of behaviour, because of the fact that they have no real powers in terms of arrest and so on.

"The problem is there has never been any independent assessment of whether the PCSO experiment works, which we would like, while the public should also be asked what they want."

Mr Enver said of the YouTube video clip: "It is crazy that people are going out and filming this kind of thing and then touting it around in some sort of public exhibition.

"However, more generally, it demonstrates the whole issue surrounding PCSOs that we have raised on a number of occasions."