Police are leaving the Thames Valley Force in huge numbers, despite a major recruitment drive launched this week, writes Emma Henry.

Figures released today show 143 officers quit in the six months to the end of October more than double what the force would expect to lose in a whole year.

And although the force has been given Home Office permission to recruit 111 more officers this financial year, it actually expects to find just 42 suitable applicants.

Police Federation chairman Insp Martin Elliott said: "What was a very thin blue line on the streets is now not even thin, it's dotted. This is a crisis we will lose more officers this year than we will take on."

Assistant Chief Constable Paul West admitted the force was facing a problem.

He said pressure was being put on the Government to give officers a living allowance, similar to the 6,000 London weighting for Metropolitan Police officers.

He said: "We have lost more than double what we would normally experience. The main thing is to get really high-profile recruiting, but it is difficult to know what more we can do.

"We have got a bit of an image problem. We have got to push the message that it is an exciting, progressive, high-tech, varied career. If you want to join the police, there has never been a better time."

The Police Federation blames the staffing crisis on the lack of a rent allowance to offset high living costs in the area and on officers recruited in the last big drive in the 1970s reaching retirement age.

Insp Elliott said: "The answer is the reinstatement of the housing allowance, which was taken away in 1994. That 3,000 or 4,000 a year makes a big difference. We also need to recruit more locally from the indigenous people of Thames Valley."

He said the force was in danger of becoming a training ground for officers who then moved to other forces, where they could live more cheaply.

A report to the Thames Valley Police Authority blames the low number of recruits on the "increasing problems of attracting the right calibre of applicants", and warns that key departments including mobile and operational support, protection and control rooms are being affected.

The report says: "The level of existing trained officers who are transferring to other forces or leaving the service completely is rising. The effect of this is likely to negate the additional officers recruited.

By the end of the financial year it is expected that the overall strength of the force will have remained static, but in total the areas will have increased their actual strength at the expense of the headquarters departments."

Of the 143 officers who have left Thames Valley since April, 36 transferred to other forces, 44 retired, 41 resigned and 22 have taken career breaks.

Yesterday, the Oxford Mail carried a letter from one force employee, who wanted to remain anonymous.

The letter warned that the cost of living was not the only factor in losing officers, adding: "They are sick of a management so desperate for change and so desperate to be seen as leading lights in national policing issues that they are leaving many hardworking and committed police officers struggling to keep up.

"It is a management so desperate to apportion elsewhere the blame for its own failings that it has the audacity to misrepresent the facts to a large regional newspaper.

"Perhaps it is a management that needs to commit as much time to listening to its own employees as it does the public we serve."

Thames Valley Police launched a major recruitment drive earlier this week. For more information call 01865 846816.