Town centres may face chaos under new plans to get rid of traffic wardens.

Brighton and Hove Council is planning to take over parking controls from the police next year, replacing wardens with attendants but there have already been calls for the new attendants to be given special powers.

Bus boss Roger French says the new attendants should be given extra powers to deal with the widesacle abuse of traffic laws.

But the new local authority attendants will only have the power to deal with decriminalised parking offences such as cars parked illegally. They will not be able to deal with moving traffic which will remain the responsibility of the police.

By next year there will be no traffic wardens in Brighton with the power to enforce more serious traffic offences.

Jim Palmer, Senior Traffic Warden at Brighton Police said:"The parking attendants will only be able to deal with parking restrictions such as yellow lines. They will not be able to direct traffic, or deal with obstructions."

The decriminalisation of parking offences was adopted in London in 1994, and has since been introduced in Portsmouth and Hastings.

Jim Palmer said: "I heard of one incident in London where a driver moved from a yellow line onto a pedestrian crossing, as he knew the parking attendant would not be able to do anything. I cannnot say the same thing will happen in Brighton, but the attendants won't be able to to enforce bus lanes or anything like that. Something will have to be done about it."

Brighton and Hove Council deny the changeover will lead to any problems and is confident its new attendants will have the powers to tackle Brighton's parking problems.

A spokesman said: " At the moment there are less than 30 traffic wardens in Brighton and Hove, but when the council takes over there will be more than 60 parking attendants. There are differences in powers, but we do not anticipate any problems. Illegal parking will be our top priority, which should benefit taxi and bus lanes. Enforcement will be better all round."