EAST Lancashire MPs have reacted angrily to a new police restructuring depriving the force’s three divisions of their own individual Chief Superintendents.

They have been told the existing three divisions will now be headed locally by a Chief Inspector ‘acting up’ as commander in the latest cost-saving measure.

A single Chief Supt based at force headquarters at Hutton near Preston will oversee their work.

It follows the merger of six divisions, each with their own commander of Chief Supt rank, to three in 2013.

This saw the Pennine Division, based in Burnley, amalgamated with its Eastern counterpart based in Blackburn.

The merged East Division was based at Blackburn’s Greenbank headquarters with one Chief Supt in command rather than the previous two.

Chorley MP Lindsay Hoyle and his Labour colleagues for Burnley, Julie Cooper, and Blackburn, Kate Hollern, have expressed concern at the change and promised to lobby Home Office ministers and county police bosses on the restructuring.

It follows the loss of 789 officers across the county since 2009 according to a Police Federation analysis.

Mr Hoyle, who will meet Lancashire Chief Constable Andy Rhodes next week, said: “I am deeply alarmed to learn that the three vital ‘Divisional Commander’ posts are to be abolished.

“Whilst I understand Chief Inspectors will be ‘acting up’, it is clear the three divisions will be losing a senior commander who holds a strategic view as well as the authority to exercise decision-making authority.

Mrs Cooper. who is to meet Lancashire Crime Commissioner Clive Grunshaw soon, said: “Against a background of police cuts, this news is troubling.

“I am concerned ‘restructuring’ is a euphemism for further fragmentation and a service being further stretched."

Mrs Hollern said: ‘‘It is really concerning to hear of a further scaling back of the police presence in Blackburn. It threatens to undermine community policing altogether.”

Lancashire Police were unable to comment.