DETECTIVES in Hampshire are spending hundreds of hours glued to computer screens instead of out on the streets investigating crimes.

Latest figures reveal that laborious paperwork accounts for nearly a quarter of the time CID officers across the county spend on dealing with specific incidents.

A new survey shows detectives investigating assaults, robberies, burglaries and other crimes spend an average of 22 per cent of their time tackling administration.

The figure is almost as much as the 25 per cent spent working on actual inquiries and interviewing witnesses. Likewise, statistics show their uniformed colleagues spend a typical 7.23 per cent of their time on paperwork when dealing with specific incidents - more than is devoted to interviewing and dealing with those arrested, issuing advice or carrying out searches.

Today, Hampshire Police Federation called for urgent action to tackle the growing mountain of bureaucracy which affects all its 3,500 rank and file officers.

Chairman Alan Gordon said: "Consecutive governments have pledged to reduce this bureaucracy but none has yet succeeded. As soon as one piece of paperwork is abolished, another time-consuming data collection system is introduced to replace it.

"It is an absolute nightmare for officers, who are becoming slaves to computers. CID officers are having to spend hours completing paperwork for crime files; administration chores which at one time would have been handled by civilian clerks."

Sgt Gordon said the advent of e-mail throughout Hampshire police in the early 1990s had, in some cases, hindered rather than helped time spent on admin duties. Many officers were having to plough through dozens of largely-irrelevant e-mails on return from rest days, taking up valuable time which could be better spent out on the beat or investigating crimes.

The figures, revealed to Hampshire Police Authority today, were based on uniformed, traffic and CID officers' time during last year.

Police authority chairman Ron Culver said: "We have been concerned for a long time about the time officers are having to spend on paperwork when they could be better employed on the street.

"Every year we ask the chief constable to have a look at the problem, but much of it is due to instructions from the Home Office. There are two or three forms for everything."