THE public is receiving a 'poorer police service' as crime rises and police numbers continue to fall, the body which represents officers in Oxfordshire has warned.

Thames Valley Police federation said police officers were being 'run ragged' as funding cuts continued to bite.

Federation chairman Craig O'Leary said an increase in workloads and dwindling numbers of officers was a 'recipe for disaster' and added the cuts were contributing to a rise in mental health issues among staff.

In 2010, there were 4,434 police officers across the force, which has now dropped to 4,096.

Pc O'Leary said the drop in officer numbers put staff under 'increased pressure', which ultimately meant the level of service was diminished.

He added: "The correlation’s quite clear.

"If the demand is increasing and there are fewer officers to do the work, it means longer response times for members of the public and we don’t get to them as quickly perhaps as we would like to.

"What it means for our members is they’re under increasing pressure.

"The workload that those officers were doing has to be picked up somewhere, and it’s spread now across fewer officers.

"They [the public] don’t then get to see an officer always in the times that they should do. So it’s a poorer service to the public."

The force is expected to lose a further 59 officer posts over the next three years as it braces to make a further £22m of savings on top of cash cuts of more than £88m since 2011.

Across England and Wales there are now 123,142 police officers – 20,592 fewer than there were when the coalition government came to power in 2010.

Last year Thames Valley Police Chief Constable Francis Habgood guaranteed to meet the needs of the public despite the Government austerity cuts.

In the force's budget, police and crime commissioner Anthony Stansfeld stated £10.5m will be cut this year – with a draft budget for day to day police costs for 2017/18 totalling £392m.

Head of Tasking and Resilience, Chief Superintendent Steven Hockin previously told the Oxford Mail that the ‘policing landscape’ had changed with the emergence of ‘new complex crimes such as cyber-crime and the growth of others including sexual offences’.

He added the force’s new operating model, which started on June 1, would ‘ensure’ it was ‘agile enough’ to allocate resources where needed.

Pc O'Leary said chief constables around the country were now telling the Government they were 'struggling to meet demand'.

He added: "We need the Government now to recognise the fact that we are struggling to meet demand.

"I see there were some comments from Nick Hurd, the new policing minister, that he recognises and hears what the police are saying to him, and it’s not just the police federation.

"It’s coming now from the chiefs.

"The people on the street know what they’re talking about, we’ve been saying this for several years.

"Don’t just take it as scaremongering by the police federation. It’s not.

"We’re listening to our members and we’re feeding that to the Government.

"I appreciate the chiefs are now on board and they recognise that we are stretched, and it’s all too little too late."

Latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics revealed crime across Oxfordshire is on the rise, with a jump of almost five per cent in reported offences in a year – including a surge in violent crime and shoplifting in Oxford.

Between April and December 2016, 108,122 crimes in the county were reported, compared to 103,413 over the same period in 2015 and 100,804 in 2014.