Cumbria’s Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) has insisted he has no plans to abolish the county’s 95 PCSOs.

Police community support officers have been scrapped in Norfolk with the money used to hire 81 more police officers and police staff.

Cumbria's PCC Peter McCall was asked at a meeting with councillors whether he had similar plans.

Mr McCall said: “We have no plans to follow the Norfolk model and it’s not a route I can ever see us going down.

"Norfolk did away with all of their PCSOs and replaced them with police officers and I am told it had widespread public support.”

“The rationale was that they can get much more out of a police officer than a PCSO.

"My concern with taking that approach is there are some things that we need PCSOs to do which would be a waste of a police officer’s time.”

Mr McCall said there had been some anti-social behaviour incidents in parts of the county where young people had squared up to PCSOs.

He said: “They thought they didn’t have the powers to nick them and had tried to face up to them, so we had police officers go out with the PCSOs and very clearly put these people in the picture.

"I’ll make no apologies for that action.

"PCSOs do need that support from the police [officers] and they do valuable community work.

"My fear, if we were to follow that route of getting rid of them, would be that the community engagement that PCSOs do would be lost.”

Councillor Bill McEwan, the mayor of Barrow, and chairman of Cumbria’s police and crime panel which holds the commissioner to account, said he strongly disagreed with any idea to get rid of PCSOs which he said was a scheme originally proposed by the Home Office.

Panel member John Mallinson, a Carlisle city and county councillor for Houghton and Irthington, said: “I’m surprised that Norfolk thinks it’s a positive thing to get rid of PCSOs.

"I accept PCSOs don’t have the powers of a police officer and don’t have the power of arrest, but I would say PCSOs are really valued.”