A SENIOR North-East policeman has warned that the ban on hunting will be difficult to enforce.

The outgoing chief constable of Northumbria Police, Crispian Strachan, admits to having adopted a softly-softly approach to dealing with the banned sport.

In a television interview, he said: "It is not a high priority because it is not a recordable offence.

"There are no human victims and -I'm sorry, there will be people watching this who feel very strongly -but I am bound to put human victims before animal victims and then deal accordingly with resources.

"It is an offence which Parliament has defined in very difficult terms. To see people riding across the countryside with hounds will not be an offence in itself, and we are going to have a lot of confusing reports coming in.

"If we think an offence has been committed, we will investigate it as we would in other circumstances.

"We are certainly not going to be diverting huge snatch squads simply because of the difficulty in defining it and the difficulty in making sure what is happening."

Mr Strachan, chief constable of Northumbria Police since 1998, will appear on The Sunday Interview on Tyne Tees on Sunday at 12.15pm.