MORE bobbies are to be ordered on the beat in an effort to drive down crime levels in Darlington.

The changes will mean that fewer beat officers are pulled away from their designated areas to cover for colleagues who are away from their jobs in police headquarters.

There are now 88 core officers in Darlington who will deal with priority, ongoing incidents that need a quick response, such as road accidents and serious crimes.

Another 22 beat officers will operate in specific areas and will also have a detective each working in their wards.

The initiative came as the Government faced calls last night to include the North-East in a new nationwide crackdown on street crime.

MPs said they were bewildered that the region appeared to have been ignored in the Government's new Robbery Reduction Initiative.

About 5,000 traffic policemen across the country are to be put back on the beat to beef up specialist squads targeting thugs in London, on Merseyside, Lancashire, the West Midlands, Avon and Somerset, West and South Yorkshire, Thames Valley, Nottingham and Manchester.

Ashok Kumar, Labour MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, said he found it inexplicable that crime-hit areas had been left out.

Dr Kumar is taking up Teesside's omission from the pilot list with Home Secretary David Blunkett.

He said: "Put simply, to an elderly person who may have been the victim of street crime in Middlesbrough, or east Cleveland, the fact that parts of the leafy south-East are benefiting from this initiative will be of little comfort."

But yesterday, a Home Office spokesman revealed there were no immediate plans to extend the scheme to any of the North-East police forces, although it had not been ruled out.

He said: "These areas have been chosen because they have the worst problems. It is not a good thing to be on this particular list as regards crime levels. It is possible that the scheme could be extended, although there is no time scale for that."

A spokesman for Durham Police said: "Darlington police chiefs felt beat officers were too often being used to cover for gaps on the core staff caused by absences due to annual leave, training requirements or sickness.

"As a result, designated beat officers were sometimes missing from the communities they were mean to be based in, after being pulled into the main office in the town centre to cover for absent colleagues."

To ensure the new beat officers spend the maximum time in their areas, a divisional co-ordinator has been appointed to manage staffing levels