Sussex police officers are being given £500 bonuses if they manage to convince former colleagues to leave the Met and "return to the fold".

Sources said officers in Sussex have been told they can pocket the "monkey" - £500 in London slang - as a one-off payment if they lure their old workmates away from the capital, after it was revealed there was a "crisis" in the retention of officers in Sussex Police, with a record number leaving last year.

The number of officers leaving Sussex Police for the Met has soared over the past three years, with 78 officers recruited last year. In 2005, only nine officers left for the Met. In 2006, 23 left Sussex for the capital.

Brian Stockham, chairman of Sussex Police Federation, said there were 73 officers serving who had admitted they were looking to transfer to London.

He said: "The Met uses overtime more freely than us. I spoke to a detective sergeant who went to the Met and he said he was getting £20,000 a year more with London weighting and overtime."

He said the force was "targeting"

officers from Sussex Police because they were so skilled and well trained and said the problem was being compounded by the fact the average age of officers in his force was falling.

He said: "It is difficult at Sussex to find any station where there are people who have more than five years' experience and a high proportion of them are probationers."

A spokesman for Sussex Police said: "There is a package of measures to ensure Sussex is the place where officers want to work and to halt the transfer to London. We are looking at a variety of measures and surveying staff to see what benefits they would most like.

"Sussex is a great place to work but we do concede that people working in the Met get several thousands more than those working in Sussex and that is what we are up against."

A Sussex PC, who did not want to be named, said: "The Met is very attractive - it offers a lot more money, free travel and lots of overtime.

Loads of lads talk about leaving for the Met and more and more of us are doing it."

A Met spokesman denied it was targeting forces to recruit officers, adding: "Between April and December 2007, the Met recruited 427 officers from other forces. We've had no difficulty in attracting experienced officers to the better pay and wider opportunities available in the Met."

Sussex Police have 3,177 officers and they are being surveyed to see what incentives would keep them.

London police get a maximum £6,200 weighting on their salaries on top of their basic annual salary and are given free travel on London's transport. Sussex's problem is about to be exacerbated by London Mayor Boris Johnson's plan to recruit an extra 550 officers in the next year.

A Home Office spokesman said: "We are aware of the concerns of the South East forces about poaching of their officers by the Met, but this is primarily a matter to be resolved by the forces in question through ACPO (the Association of Chief Police Officers)."