Every public sector organisation is having to make difficult decisions regards funding in these times of austerity measures, double-dip recession and swingeing cuts to the public purse – and sadly, the police are no exception.

West Yorkshire Chief Constable Sir Norman Bettison has already warned that cutting the district’s force too close to the bone could mean that if – heaven forbid – the area was faced with the sort of riots that set London aflame last year, the increasingly thin blue line would find it difficult to cope.

The latest axe to fall on West Yorkshire Police is not, on the face of it, the sort of dramatic cut that garners huge headlines, but is nevertheless an unwelcome move that sees localised services absorbed into regional bodies.

Next month West Yorkshire will no longer have its own underwater search unit, instead having to call upon the services of a unit based on Humberside and covering that area as well as all forces in West, South and North Yorkshire.

Anyone who remembers the terrible scenes in the aftermath of Stephen Griffiths murdering three Bradford women in 2009-2010 will recall images of the police divers scouring the district’s waterways for vital evidence and clues.

If such a need for extensive underwater searching was required again, West Yorkshire would have to jockey for position with three other forces for the services of just nine specially trained officers who will make up the new regional diving team.

Vital time could be lost in such an investigation, or perhaps in the hunt for a missing child, due to this regionalisation. Let us hope it is not a cut too far.