CRIME will rise on the streets of Worthing and Shoreham in the wake of hefty cuts to the local police budget, councillors say.

Funding for the Adur and Worthing Safer Communities Partnership will be slashed by more than half under “re-balancing” plans announced by Police and Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne last week.

The annual grant is to drop 55 per cent from £95,160 to £42,872.95 from next year.

Now councillors on the crime fighting group have urged Mrs Bourne to go back to the drawing board – or risk jeopardising their good work.

“Any reduction in funding will impact on frontline services that promote safety across our communities,” said Councillor Dave Simmons and Councillor Val Turner, of Hillside and Gaisford wards respectively, in a joint statement.

“We sincerely hope the police and crime commissioner will reconsider this unwelcome approach once we have submitted our formal response on behalf of the communities of Adur and Worthing.”

The Adur and Worthing Safer Communities Partnership is partly self-sufficient, with revenues coming from the private sector and third-party contributions, as well as the police precept.

But Cllrs Simmons and Turner said they were being punished for their own initiative.

They said: “On initial viewing, we are disappointed that the police commissioner has failed to recognise the innovation of our partnership. Unlike many other community safety partnerships across Sussex, Adur and Worthing has been successful in bidding for and generating significant amounts of additional income to deliver bespoke services such as supporting outreach workers for women and the street community.

“This approach has achieved considerable success and been replicated in other areas of the county.”

But Mrs Bourne said she had redistributed funds fairly and pointed out the county-wide budget remained the same.

She said: “It became apparent the distribution of funds no longer matched demographic factors or overall funding that some CSPs were able to access, including their available reserves.

“It is only fair to taxpayers and also to the communities that each CSP is there to help, that funding more closely follows population and crime over the past four years.”

The changes will last until at least the end of 2021.