An extra 600 dedicated community police officers will be recruited and deployed across the west of Scotland within a year, reversing decades of decline in the role and in the numbers of traditional beat cops.

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An extra 600 dedicated community police officers will be recruited and deployed across the west of Scotland within a year, reversing decades of decline in the role and in the numbers of traditional beat cops.

In a move described as the most positive development in UK policing for 25 years, Strathclyde Police will have a unit of 1200 community officers taking on mainstream duties from dealing with low-level vandalism to counter-terrorism.

Every officer joining the force from this year on will be expected to spend a period on community duties, freeing up resources for "response policing".

If taken as a standalone unit, it would be the fourth-biggest force in Scotland, behind Strathclyde, Lothian and Borders and Grampian, but twice as big as Central Scotland and three times the size of Dumfries and Galloway.

Details of the scheme, expected to cost more than £20m, were unveiled at yesterday's Strathclyde Joint Police Board meeting and will be presented to the Scottish Government on June 24.

The Herald understands the government sees the model as a potential template for the rest of Scotland.

Details of Strathclyde's Community Policing Model comes as the force in Central Scotland showcases the role and effectiveness of its civilian officers who are tasked with investigating low-level crimes.

A pilot project using civilian investigators was launched in Falkirk. Some 700 incidents, including housebreaking, car theft and vandalism, have been investigated by civilians since April 1. Staff say the pilot has saved 2000 hours of police time since it was introduced.

The roll out of community officers in Strathclyde is expected to begin in the coming months, with every area witnessing a visible rise in officers.

The officers will only be removed from their designated areas in exceptional circumstances, and with the approval of chief superintendents.

Names, photographs and even e-mail addresses of the officers will be circulated within communities, the boundaries of which will be council wards, with the average time in each neighbourhood expected to be around three years and each unit having a seven-day presence.

Numbers of officers per area will depend on various factors, including crime statistics, deprivation levels and population density.

The additional personnel will be funded by the Scottish government, which has committed 465 of its 1000 pledged new officers to Strathclyde, while all the councils within the Police Board have contributed funding for 200.

Additional funding has been secured through streamlining bureaucracy, including a reduction in the number of superintendents, 11 having retired or in the process of leaving within the past 13 months.

Some activities such as school visits will be scaled down, although Strathclyde is planning to extend its campus cops scheme, while diversionary activities for young people will now simply be facilitated and not organised by the police.

Chief Constable Stephen House has made an increase in frontline officers and reduction in bureaucracy a key commitment since joining the force last September from the Met.

Mr House said: "Community policing will be the hard edge of policing, concentrating efforts on enforcement. They will be responsible for answering calls within their area and along with other agencies coming up with longer-term solutions to prevent future calls."