PLANS for the future of policing in Hampshire have been dealt a major blow after funding for hundreds of Police Community Support Officers (CPSOs)was cut.

The number of officers aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour that were due to patrol the streets of the county will be cut by 200 after the Home Office slashed the money it was allocating to fund them.

The PCSOs were a key part of the neighbourhood policing plan, that involves localised teams of officers serving communities, and was due to be rolled out across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight over the next two years.

So far Hampshire has recruited 200 of the 539 PCSOs it had planned to take on after a bid for funding by the Government was accepted.

However, the Home Office has written to Hampshire police explaining it was changing the neighbourhood policing fund and as a result they would not be paying for the number of officers they had provisionally agreed to.

Assistant Chief Constable for Territorial Operations Simon Cole said: "We are disappointed that the communities of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight will not now benefit from the number of PCSOs that was originally intended.

"Our plans for the delivery of Safer Neighbourhoods were built around recruiting 539 PCSOs by April 2008 and our target for recruitment set by the Home Office has now been reduced to 333. We are considering the implications of this reduction in funding on our plans for implementing neighbourhood policing across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight."

Chairman of Hampshire Police Authority, the body in charge of the constabulary's finances, Mike Attenborough-Cox said: "We will have to go back to the drawing board on how we allocate the officers we now have funding for. We were told it was the only game in town to sign up to which we did and now we have been told we can't have the number we were expecting."

The news has been criticised by supporters of the officers who spend 80 per cent of their time on patrol targeting low level crime.

Colin Mercer, Chairman of Eastleigh District Association of Parish & Town Councils that has already part paid for a number of PCSOs, said he was concerned for the long term future of the officers. "It does concern me about the long term future of PCSOs after the two year agreement runs out. They have made such a difference to the community already. The government can't chop and change like this."

MP for the area Chris Huhne said the cutbacks were entirely out of line with the priorities that people wanted.

"One of the biggest concerns in my post-bag is anti-social behaviour such as vandalism and intimidation, which are exactly the sort of offences that Police community support officers are best at tackling," he added.