Sussex Police’s top officer said he would welcome the power to make police officers redundant.

Chief constable Martin Richards said about 75 experienced officers will be forced to retire later this month if Sussex Police gets the go-ahead to invoke a controversial regulation.

Currently police officers cannot be made redundant and staffing levels can only be cut through recruitment freezes or the use of regulations which allow the force to make officers retire after 30 years’ service.

Yesterday Mr Richards said he had “significant” concerns about losing so many experienced officers at the same time.

The force will be told in two weeks by Sussex Police Authority – the independent panel of councillors and lay people which oversees the force – if it can invoke Regulation A19 of the Police Pensions Regulations.

Under the plan about 50 officers could be forced to retire each year.

Mr Richards said: “Many of those staff are indeed very talented officers and it is a great regret of mine that we are even close to invoking regulation A19.

“Losing talented people is not something any employer would chose to do but unfortunately there are other financial imperatives so if we have to go down this road we will.”

Police staff are subject to normal employment law but officers are not.

Mr Richards said: “To equalise all of those terms and conditions and rules and laws would be marvellous. It would make life a lot simpler but I can’t see that happening.

“It will take a year or two yet before police regulations are changed to accommodate redundancies on the police officer side of the house.”

Anational reviewinto police employment law is currently ongoing.

Sussex Police must find £52 million of cuts by 2015 and about £14 million savings has already been made.

A total of 340 people have taken voluntary redundancy in the past three months. A further 200 police staff posts will go under the plans and 500 police officer posts.

Further savings will be found by the closure of police stations, including Hove, Eastbourne and Worthing, while other stations have had opening hours reduced.

Mr Richards said: “People would rather pay for visible street policing rather than the ventilating of almost a corpse of a building which is not used by anybody other than police officers as somewhere to hang their hat.”

He added said the force aimed to provide a better “streamlined” service through reducing bureaucracy and red tape and collaborating with nearby forces.