A WILTSHIRE police division wants to scrap its drugs squad at a time when drug-related crime is at an all time high in the area.

The drugs unit, based at Melksham and covering the whole of north and west Wiltshire, consists of just three highly specialised officers.

It was set up five years ago and the force had prided itself on being one of the only counties in the country to have one.

But this week Chief Supt Martin Abbott, who is in charge of C Division which covers north and west Wiltshire, confirmed the drugs unit as it exists at the moment would go as part of implementing new national guidelines.

He said: "I want the new arrangement to be in place before the end of the year. This does not need the agreement of the Chief Constable. It is up to me how I use resources in C division.''

But he pledged drugs would still be a high priority for the force.

He explained that the new National Intelligence Model meant that more resources had to be put towards getting better information on a number of major crimes such as burglaries and car crime.

He said these crimes were often related so it made sense for one unit to get intelligence on them all.

He could not guarantee that the officers in the existing drug unit would be part of the new set up.

He said: "There may be a number of individuals with a lot of experience but no individual is bigger than the job."

But the plan has upset some officers involved in the drugs unit and it has also been criticised by drug campaigners in Wiltshire.

Ann Adams, whose 20-year-old daughter Lyndsey is a heroin addict and hasn't seen her family since January, helped launch a Shop a Pusher campaign in the area.

She said: "We were kept going with the knowledge that we had the backing of the drugs squad. If we had information we knew we could pass it on to them."

Detective Chief Superintendent Gary Chatfield, head of Wiltshire CID, last week warned of a huge influx of heroin and crack cocaine from Bristol. He said of 950 people arrested for burglaries in the last year, 170 of them freely admitted to drug dependency, 56 per cent of them to heroin.

He said today: "Wiltshire will always continue to treat drugs as a top priority and do our utmost to catch the dealers.''

The changes in Wiltshire Police's C division are not expected to directly affect police operations in Swindon, where there are more than 2,000 heroin addicts.