We should be able to achieve much the same results in areas like that with fewer officers

Alan McQuillan Assistant chief constable

"For example, in key areas like speeding the big barrier to actually making more detections is not the traffic officers on patrol.

"It is the back office costs of processing the fixed penalty notices, so we should be able to achieve much the same results in areas like that with fewer officers."

However, the chairman of the Police Federation, Jimmy Spratt, said the cuts would push policing to crisis point and would be a disaster for road users and for the police.

'Essential'

Speaking on Wednesday, Mr Spratt said: "Areas throughout the whole of the province are crying out for additional police officers and still none of the new people have come out onto the streets yet," he said.

"That will not happen for another two or three months and there are major difficulties in many areas including mobile support units, CID and all sorts of areas.

"Certainly that needs to be managed, but it needs to be managed not by taking essential policing off the streets.

"Traffic policing is essential. People are being killed on our roads daily."