NO police area – including Teignbridge – will be spared the brutal budget cuts facing an already depleted Devon and Cornwall force over the next five years.

Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer has conceded that the two counties operation could see its overall manpower slashed to just 3,900 posts by 2020 – nearly half of the numbers it boasted just five years ago.

One senior officer working out of Teignbridge admitted: ‘At the moment we don’t know what the level of impact these cuts will have at a local level. That has yet to be decided. But the cuts will be right across the board. No one is immune.’

The savings being forced on beleaguered bobbies may not be too far off the £60 million mark with 1,300 jobs on the line.

Devon and Teignbridge councillor Gordon Hook fears the consequences of the relentless financial assault on the constabulary.

He said this week: ‘One thing we could always rely on from a Tory government was a strong police force. We cannot rely on that now.

‘I very much fear that this is a hugely negative backward step which will be viewed with great concern by the residents of Newton Abbot and Teignbridge.’

He added: ‘First they reduced our PCSOs, then closed the front desk at Newton Abbot Police Station and now they are cutting the constables available to the public.’

Some senior officers have described the effect on policing local beats as ‘absolutely dreadful’ with the traditional bobby on the beat effectively becoming a thing of the past, splitting police even further away from the communities they serve.

All may not be lost. A rearguard action is being fought by Devon and Cornwall police commissioner Tony Hogg who is threatening to sue the Home Office if the Whitehall cuts – under a controversial funding formula – are executed.

He and six fellow commissioners have announced their intention to mount a legal challenge to the spending review which they insist is ‘unfair and unjustified.’

They want the process stopped immediately and re-drawn to ditch the worst excesses of the swingeing cuts.

Among the casualties in the shadow of the looming axe are the five German Shepherd dogs at the Ashburton-based dog handling section. They are deemed a luxury in the current climate of austerity fever.

Chief Constable Sawyer said this week: ‘To meet the potential budget gap we must plan to reduce the overall workforce by 1,300 posts in the next five years.’

He added: ‘It is not lost on me that every single one of these “posts” is occupied by hard-working, dedicated colleagues who strive to serve the public and provide essential policing services which keep the public safe.

‘Overall, this would mean that the workforce would have shrunk from 6,200 posts in 2010 to around 3,900 by 2019/2020.’

He warned that cuts of such ‘magnitude’ would inevitably have a significant impact on the service his team could deliver to the public.

‘We have clear statutory obligations around areas such as safeguarding, the National Strategic Policing Requirement, the Civil Contingencies Act – floods, disasters. We are therefore considering which other services we can continue to provide outside these core services,’ he said.

And he explained: ‘Despite making plans for significant non-staff cuts, over 80 per cent of our budget is allocated as staff costs.

‘Over the course of the last comprehensive spending review we shrank our budget by £58m – £20m of which came from non-staff costs. It means that a small pot is already significantly smaller than it was.

‘If we halt all police officer recruitment we would reduce by 760 posts. Some 540 police staff posts would then also need to be found. This gives us equally difficult choices such as the complete removal of all 360 PCSO posts and a further 180 posts to be found from elsewhere in the organisation.’

Meanwhile, Mr Hogg is set to launch a public consultation process in the region to gauge the public’s willingness to pay more through their council tax police precept to protect some services which might be lost if the cuts take full effect.