THE North-East's biggest centre for new police recruits could face the axe because of a radical shake-up in the way officers are trained.

The probationer training facility at Durham Police's Aykley Heads HQ in Durham City may be threatened under modernisation plans, The Northern Echo has learned.

And satellite training sites at Ponteland, Northumberland, and Harrogate, North Yorkshire, set up to meet the demand for extra recruits, are also due to close over the next few months as they are said to be no longer needed.

In a separate development, police chiefs at Aykley Heads have been forced to reduce initial basic training for new recruits from 15 to 12 weeks as a result of a funding crisis.

Centrex - the national body responsible for police training - is facing an overall budget shortfall of about £24m after its Home Office grant for this financial year was reduced from £91m to £74.8m.

As a result, it is cutting back about 100 permanent staff across the country and a number of seconded police officers in training posts are also being sent back to their forces.

Under changes to training provision, Centrex plans to dispose of most of its 14 leased centres and concentrate on a core number of sites amid moves to make training more flexible and to bring it back in-house.

The lease on the Aykley Heads centre runs out in March next year and officials admit it is far from certain that it will be renewed.

It takes more than 1,500 new police officers each year from seven police forces across the North-East and Yorkshire and Humberside.

Chief Inspector Trevor Robinson, head of training at Aykley Heads, said there was "a period of uncertainty coming up to the renewal of the lease".

He admitted that civilian jobs could go at Durham, and at the satellite sites in Ponteland and Harrogate, but only as a last resort.

Some police functions will remain at the Harrogate site in Pannal Ash, but a multi-million pound revamp is thought to have been put on the backburner.

PC Steve Smith, chairman of the County Durham branch of the Police Federation, said: "The whole area of probationer training is under review, and while I have not heard anything about Durham, if it were to close, then responsibility for this would fall back on the force.

"We have registered our views and I would hope some kind of agreement is reached which meets the needs of everybody, including the general public."

Martin Deller, a spokesman for Centrex, said: "We are developing a staged strategy looking at all of our sites and their staffing, but no final decisions have been made."