Police in Sussex are suffering sleepless nights and some are even quitting because of the mounds of paperwork they tackle every day.

One officer urged Chief Constable Ken Jones to "get rid of some of the crap" and get police back out on the streets.

PC Ken Smith was speaking at a meeting of the Sussex branch of the Police Federation, attended by 400 officers at the Sussex County Cricket Ground on Tuesday.

It was a special meeting, held every few years, when rank and file officers can fire questions at a panel of senior officers and federation representatives.

PC Smith said officers were "tearing their hair out" and waking in the night worrying about paperwork despite Government promises to cut red tape.

He said a colleague recently resigned because he couldn't cope with the mounds of forms or the stress that went with them.

PC Smith said: "He told me he would prefer to be a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) so he could do the job he joined the service to do - to be out on the streets."

Mr Jones agreed bureaucracy had become a "drag on us all" and added: "We need to press the Government more to reduce it."

Meanwhile, he said his deputy Joe Edwards was leading a project to cut red tape and get police doing what he joined the service for, "to get wrongdoers off the streets".

Clint Elliott, general secretary of the federation, said Home Office demands for performance indicators added to the paperwork but they also showed politicians' lack of trust in the service.

He asked who was measuring the performance of the Home Office which had spent 20 years failing to provide effective new technology to the service.

He said: "They have the cheek to measure our performance when theirs is non-existent. They can't deliver a service at all."

The "brain drain" of experienced officers leaving Sussex to join the Metropolitan Police was continuing.

Several recently left Gatwick to enjoy an extra £6,000 pay plus free travel.

Brian Stockham, federation branch chairman, said it was no good the force urging police to stay because Sussex was a lovely place to live.

He said: "They already know that. They live here and we police them. They travel to London each day for more money."

Mr Jones said he firmly believed the extra money should be "equalised" across the South-East. "I have said it to the Government and I will continue to say it," he said.

"It is a wrong and flawed policy and it is unfair."