Cornwall could lose all of its Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) and halt all new staff recruitment as deeper cuts are threatened by central government .

Working on a best-case scenario of 25 per cent budget cuts rather than a possible 40 per cent cut, the office of the Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Hogg has said stopping all officer recruitment would reduce the force by 760 posts, and cutting PCSOs would get rid of another 360, but another 180 jobs would still need to be cut after that.

The cuts would mean a total of 1,300 posts were lost by 2020, leaving the force with 3,900 staff, a third of the numbers it had in 2010.

Following a Police and Crime Panel meeting, Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer said: “It is clear that any cut of this magnitude would have a significant impact on the service we are able to provide to the public. We have clear statutory obligations around areas such as safeguarding, the National Strategic Policing Requirement, the Civil Contingencies Act and we are therefore considering which other services we can continue to provide, outside of those core services.

“Despite making plans for significant non-staff cuts, over 80 per cent of our budget is allocated as staff costs. Over the course of the last comprehensive spending review we shrank our budget by £58m; £20m of which came from non staff costs, which means that a small pot is already significantly smaller than it was

Chief Constable Sawyer added: “It is not lost on me that every single one of these “posts” is occupied by hard working, dedicated colleagues who strive to serve the public and provide essential policing services which keep the public safe.

He added that the figures for Home Office grants had yet to be revealed.

The Police and Crime Crime Commissioner himself was set to tell MPs on Tuesday why the Government’s proposed police funding formula is unfair, and particularly disadvantageous to Devon and Cornwall.

He was to tell the House of Commons’ Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) that funding formula changes which could cost the force £14 million, combined with the likely impact of a comprehensive spending review (CSR)would lead to £54 million in cuts by 2019/20.

Speaking before he met the committee, he said: “The chief constable has told us what the impact of these massive cuts will be in terms of front line capability, and I am absolutely determined to do everything that I can to help mitigate the disastrous effect that I believe they will have on our communities in Devon and Cornwall.”

"They [the committee] will be under no illusion about the strength of feeling in Devon and Cornwall about how demonstrably unfair these funding proposals are to us.”

The full scale of the cuts facing Devon and Cornwall will be finalised before the end of the year when Chancellor George Osborne confirms his renewed CSR targets in the Autumn statement.

Mr Hogg's office said he will conduct a "wide scale public consultation" to gauge the public’s willingness to pay more through their council tax police precept to protect some of police services that will be lost if the cuts take full effect.