CIVILIAN jobs will be lost from at least two of the region’s police forces, as Government funding falls by a fifth in four years.

Durham Police could lose up to 140 staff and there will also be largescale redundancies from the North Yorkshire force.

Durham Police, which had warned all its 1,160 civilian workers of looming job cuts, said compulsory redundancies were now likely.

Chief Constable Jon Stoddart said the decision was made with deep regret, but the financial situation left no alternative.

“We have implemented many cost-saving measures, but the scale of the cuts proposed by the coalition Government is unprecedented,”

he said.

Earlier this week, North Yorkshire Police asked all its civilian staff to consider voluntary redundancy.

Last night, Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell said the force would have to operate with a smaller workforce.

“The next few years will be extremely challenging for North Yorkshire Police, but I am confident that the work we have already undertaken and the plans we have in place will ensure North Yorkshire continues to be one of the safest counties in England and that we deliver the best policing service possible,” he said.

Cleveland Police Authority chairman Dave McLuckie said he would do everything humanly possible to protect frontline policing, but could not give a cast-iron guarantee that services would not be affected.

Mick Henry, chairman of Northumbria Police Authority, said the cuts were disappointing and challenging, but the public should not see any reduction in the way their neighbourhoods were policed.

Chancellor George Osborne told MPs that although police spending would fall by four per cent each year until 2014, he aimed to avoid any reduction in the visibility and availability of police on the streets.

By 2014-15, the Home Office will reduce overall resource spending by 23 per cent in real terms and capital spending by 49 per cent in real terms.

A Treasury spokesman said if police authorities increased the police precept by the level forecast by the Office of Budget Responsibility, overall police budgets would fall by 14 per cent in real terms over four years.

Meanwhile, the National Policing Improvement Agency, which has bases in Crook, County Durham, and Harrogate, is to be abolished, saving £50m.