Council bosses have pledged to find the cash to keep new-style law enforcers on North-East streets once Government funding runs out.

The region was the first to introduce teams of uniformed officers to work alongside police to target burglars, persistent young offenders, litter louts and anti-social behaviour.

And they proved highly effective, leading to dramatic reductions in crime and winning high praise nationally.

Only last month, £128,000 of Government cash was pledged for 25 new officers in Chester-le-Street, Derwentside, Durham City and Sedgefield.

But local authorities are now trying to find the money to maintain the increased crime-fighting presence.

Cash from central Government dries up next March and Single Regeneration Budget funding ends a year later.

Officials at Darlington Borough Council - one of the first authorities in the country to adopt the scheme three years ago - are among those checking resources in the hope of maintaining the service.

Social services director Margaret Asquith said the Government's Neighbourhood and Street Wardens Unit, part of the Deputy Prime Minister's Office, had warned that funding would cease.

"A working group has been set up to look at mainstreaming the resource implications to continue this service, which remains extremely popular with colleagues and is increasing important in local enforcement," she says in a report to councillors on the public protection scrutiny committee.

A council spokesman said last night: "We know when certain sources of funding will cease so that gives us time to start planning. We have to make sure we can continue to deliver this service."

Sedgefield Borough Council, another pioneer of the system, is also understood to be making plans to maintain it.

Darlington's success led to it being put forward as a blueprint for other schemes across the country.

But council bosses admit that a lack of administrative support is often hampering the service, with wardens having to complete their own time-consuming paperwork.

A spokesman for the Deputy Prime Minister's Office confirmed: "When we announced funding about three years ago, it was only to kick-start the schemes in local authority areas."