The chief constable of Hampshire police has vowed to take knives off the street as part of his reforms to the county's force.

Scott Chilton wants to make the county a ‘hostile area’ for criminals, with an emphasis on catching offenders and preventing crime.

Part of the plans will see what crime commissioner Donna Jones calls a 'common sense' approach, moving CID back into local communities as well as locally-controlled response officers, neighbourhood officers and other specialist teams.

The news comes after there were two attempted murders in Southampton over the weekend and a serious assault in Eastleigh.

Both are believed to have been stabbings.

Hampshire Chronicle: PCC Donna Jones and Chief Constable Scott Chilton PCC Donna Jones and Chief Constable Scott Chilton (Image: Newsquest)

Mr Chilton said: “I am concerned about knife crime.

“There will always be very tragic circumstances when people use knives to protect themselves or to commit crime.

“Police have a range of powers.

“I have been encouraging my officers to use those powers to stop and search people where they suspect them of carrying knives and making sure we take them off the street.

“Spelling out the dangers of carrying knives is really, really important.

“The recent cases reported are really tragic and are a clear indication of why we must continue to use the power that we’ve got, but make sure we stop people from carrying knives in the first place, so the police don’t have to investigate the crime.

“And, importantly, there’s not a victim on the end of it. They suffer tragic consequences which have an impact on the community.”

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Since Mr Chilton was appointed as chief constable earlier this year, he has been focused on making Hampshire Constabulary more community focused.

This involves training up new officers and scrapping the requirement for them to study a degree as part of their training.

Instead, practical training will see them free up ‘hundreds of thousands of police hours.’

Mr Chilton said: “From today we are opening our campaign to recruit police officers without having the need to do a compulsory degree.

“I fully anticipate there will be hundreds of thousands of hours released back into frontline policing by this decision."

Police officers in their first or second year of training can decide to switch to this new course.