Police have promised extra officers will be put back on the streets in Oxfordshire after reducing red tape.

Thames Valley Police stopped using lengthy stop-and-search forms and introduced handheld computers for officers last year to get more of them out of the station and on the beat.

Officers in Oxford estimate the time they now spend on patrol has increased by 25 per cent.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith visited Cowley police station on Monday to find out about efforts to reduce police paperwork.

Thames Valley’s Chief Constable Sara Thornton welcomed the end of the use of activity-based costing forms, an audit of police time carried out intermittently throughout the year.

Ms Thornton said: “I believe we need, as much as we can, to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, while not forgetting if officers are exercising powers there needs to be a proper record of that.

“We have been in talks to reduce the amount of paperwork and time the officers spend in police stations like this, compiling files for the Crown Prosecution Service and courts.

“The system between officer and court can be streamlined, because many of the processes are repeated.”

The activity-based costing forms logged officers’ movements every 15 minutes on their shift and had to be completed by all officers once a year, over a two-week period.

The move comes weeks after a pilot scheme was launched allowing Oxfordshire police to stop filing stop-and-account forms, which officers said often took up to 13 minutes to complete.

Last year, they filled in 10,299 of the foot-long forms — which would have taken 72,000 minutes, or 150 full police shifts.

Instead, a stop check is now reported over the radio and the officer hands the person they have stopped a small receipt recording the encounter.

Mrs Smith said: “Forms such as the stop-and-account forms have clearly been taking police time and we want to get rid of these, so police officers have more time to talk and listen to local people.”

Jan Berry, the Government’s independent reducing bureaucracy advocate for the police – who is a former chairman of the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers – said: “We must end this form-filling and target-driven culture .”

More than 1,000 officers in the Thames Valley force have been handed BlackBerry personal computers as part of a £750,000 scheme to improve efficiency.

In coming weeks, more BlackBerries will be issued to traffic officers and dog handlers.

They are already being used by neighbourhood beat officers and Police Community Support Officers.

mwilkinson@oxfordmail.co.uk