POLICE chiefs in Cumbria and Lancashire could be at loggerheads if the option for a Morecambe Bay Authority is eventually adopted.

The proposal to create a new authority from the existing districts of South Lakeland, Barrow and Lancaster could mean that the two county constabularies will have to fight over which force polices the new district.

The Home Office, the government ministry responsible for policing, is legally obliged to make sure that no single district is policed by more than one force. At the moment, the area of the proposed Morecambe Bay Authority runs across existing police force and county boundaries.

Lancashire Police Authority is opposed to the Morecambe Bay idea. LPA chairwoman, Baroness Ruth Henig, said: "Any amendments to boundaries of the current Lancashire must make sense in terms of policing and community safety," she said, "We remain opposed to the loss of any areas which are currently policed by the Lancashire Constabulary, as we think the force needs to be maintained at its current size at least. Therefore, we are completely against the proposed loss of West Lancashire."

But police chiefs in Cumbria are also against the Morecambe bay authority.

Cumbria Police Authority opposed the option from the start and asked the Boundary Committee for a single unitary, as in option one, or for three unitary areas matching its own structure of three Basic Command Units, which was this week dismissed by the committee.

CPA secretary, Clive Alcock, said he would not speculate about what might happen in a hypothetical situation in the future, but said the authority remained opposed to dividing force areas and stood by the arguments it had already made to the Boundary Committee based on operational policing requirements.

Cumbria police authority, was, however, pleased with the Boundary Committee's decision to drop its draft recommendation for the merging of the Cumbria and Lancashire forces.

The proposal, which appeared late last year in the first draft of its report on local government reorganisation, was dropped after strenuous representations by Cumbria police.