MORE police officers and police community support officers will disappear from our streets, it was claimed last night – as the full scale of the cuts facing the region’s police forces was revealed.

The warning from police leaders came after figures emerged suggesting Durham Police will lose £15.1m in real terms over the next two years – and Cleveland Police will lose £17m.

Peter Chapman, regional organiser for the Unison union, which represents police staff, said he expected more job losses and any further cuts would make services untenable.

Andy Metcalfe, chairman of the Durham Police Federation, said: “It’s death by a thousand cuts. It would be naive of anyone to say the service we deliver to the public will not be affected.”

The news came on a tough day for the coalition Government as Ray Mallon, the elected Mayor of Middlesbrough, launched a blistering attack on “unfair” public sector cuts, and the Government’s new crime-mapping website crashed within hours of being launched, having attracted 300,000 hits a minute.

But Local Government Minister Grant Shapps said: “Labour maxed out the nation’s credit card by their reckless spending and we now have to start paying it off.

“The settlement is progressive and fair to both North and South, and to rural and urban England.”

Government spending reductions mean police forces are grappling to cope with 20 per cent budget cuts over the next four years.

Durham Police have already axed 86 civilian posts and are drawing up a £6m saving plan to cope with up to 110 fewer officers.

But figures obtained by Pat Glass, Labour MP for North- West Durham, suggest that “front-loading” – concentrating cuts in a short period rather than spreading them over a number of years – means the force’s overall funding will fall by £7.2m in 2011-12 and £7.8m in 2012-13.

She said: “I am very concerned about what these cuts will mean for police officer and PCSO (police community support officer) numbers in our area.

“These are reckless cuts which will hit our area hard.

They will undermine all the progress we have made to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour in north-west Durham.”

Arthur Dickinson, Unison branch secretary for Durham Police, said its workforce had already been cut quite considerably and he hoped to avoid such large numbers of redundancies again.

However, he added: “Some of these cuts are so deep – so large – that we have concerns over the service the police will be able to provide.”

Peter Thompson, chairman of Durham Police Authority, said the authority could only assess its financial situation for the year ahead and nothing could be ruled in or out.

But he added: “It’s a harsh regime. It’s required us to look even more intensely at how we deliver our service for the residents of County Durham and Darlington.”

Meanwhile, Cleveland Police Authority chairman Dave McLuckie said it would be a very tough fight indeed to protect Cleveland Police’s frontline services, in the face of real cuts of £17m over the next two years.

“No one should be under any illusion that there will be an impact – and there will be pain,” he said.

Cleveland Police have already transferred hundreds of jobs to a private firm and imposed a recruitment freeze.

North Yorkshire Police are planning to shed 200 officers and 350 civilian staff over the next two years to save £11m, and Northumbria Police – the region’s largest force – are axing 450 civilian jobs.