POLICE community support officers carry out an important role especially as budgets are facing huge cuts.

For a lot of people they are the visible face of the police service on the streets in many areas, especially on estates and in rural areas.

The 400 PCSO’s across Lancashire have helped to ease some of the pressure on regular officers in the past few years by dealing with the sort of smaller scale problems that do nevertheless cause real irritation like, for example, littering, dog fouling and minor traffic offences.

PCSO’s can also issue fines for some offences, demand names and addresses and seize drugs.

They do not have powers of arrest but nor should they without the legal responsibility and accountability or professional training of regular police officers.

Limited though their authority is however it is still surprising that all of East Lancashire’s PCSO’s have only issued a total of 19 tickets in three years.

It would be wrong to measure their effectiveness purely by the number of fines they dish out.

But the public need to know that PCSO’s can and do impose real penalties on offenders.