POLICE in West Yorkshire have been accused of "false economy" after it emerged numbers of traffic cops have been slashed by almost two thirds in the last five years.

Roads policing officers have been one of the big casualties of the cuts imposed on the force as part of the Government's austerity measures over the last five years.

New figures show that in December last year the force, which is among the largest in the country, had only 120 roads policing officers left, compared to 313 in 2010.

The force is under intense financial pressure and is still only part way through a process of making savings of £160m between the years 2010 and 2017, with further savings of almost £34m still to be found in the next two years.

However, the decision to slash the roads policing department has brought strong criticism from the road safety charity Brake, which is also based in West Yorkshire.

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Campaigns manager Gary Rae said: "Roads police officers do a vital job, enforcing important safety laws and deterring risky, law-breaking drivers. "Their work saves lives and prevents injuries and suffering. Cutting traffic police is a false economy, because the crashes that they help prevent are a huge drain on public services, as well as being devastating to those involved.

"We urge any new government to make roads policing a national policing priority, to help prevent further, needless deaths and injuries.”

Some of the county's former traffic officers have been transferred to work as district officers as part of a shake-up of how the force organises its resources.

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The force has said: "This is against a backdrop of transformational change in the service delivery, including realignment of officers to district policing roles with knowledge and skills that can be transferred across the organisation."

Cuts to roads policing are only one element of the reductions seen by the West Yorkshire force in the last five years.

Their fleet of plain vehicles has already been cut from 393 to 270 and is expected to be reduced further during the current year, while numbers of marked cars are also down, from 556 to 533, though the force say it is possible the number of marked vehicles may increase.

Police are now financing fewer operational police dogs, with 40 currently available compared to 57 five years ago.

Numbers of police stations have also been reduced, but some of those have been linked to changes with two new divisional headquarters also built.

In the last five years nine police buildings have been sold by the force, with two still on the market.

In the last five years there have also been 301 police civilian staff lost through voluntary redundancies and another 48 have lost their jobs through compulsory redundancy.