A redundancy offer made to more than 1,400 staff at Humberside Police could have a knock on effect for warranted officers, it has been claimed.

Steve Garmston, chair of Humberside Police Federation – which represents rank and file officers – also said he feared the scheme could lead to the loss of "skills and experience".

He said: "The fear is that the redundancy scheme will we be indiscriminate in the skills and experience lost, I hope that is not the case.

"The work carried out by civilians is linked to that which my members do and of course there is a fear that any roles lost in the civilian side will then have to be carried out by a police officer – something which has of course a knock on effect to policing.

"That is a real risk which the force is going to have to manage."

Mr Garmston's comments come after the Mail revealed 1,451 "operational staff" had been sent letters offering redundancy packages – only months after a similar offer was made to 718 back office staff.

The move means Humberside Police's entire 2,169 civilian workforce has been given the offer of voluntary redundancy.

A funding pot of £3.9m has been reserved to pay off PCSOs (police community support officers), scenes of crimes officers, civilian investigators and call centre staff.

As staff are expected to be lost from across East Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, Mr Garmston said the force is considering just what roles the police currently carry out – and importantly, what would have to be stopped.

"The big question for the police is what we are not going to do. We cannot lose as much money as we are going to and not stop doing some of the things we do, what that is we just don't know at the moment.

"The force needs to decide what we do and what we do not do."

And Aileen Branton, chief executive of the Humberside Association of Neighbourhood Watch Groups (HANWaG) and former chair of the Police Authority, said she believe the cuts would led to a greater need for community participation.

"We are all facing up to what effects the cuts in public spending are going to have," she said.

"It is not just the police, people across the board are worried about the future.

"We work closely with the neighbourhood policing teams and we are watching to see what the changes are going to be, but we are under no illusions and accept that policing is going to be different."

Ms Branton, who stepped down as chair in May, said she believed community groups – such as Neighbourhood Watch – would maybe have to play a bigger part in policing.

"We are all struggling but we will have to work together more, there is an element of that but I think a lot of agencies need to look and what they do and ask if they are truly working together as well as they could be doing," she said.