HOME Secretary David Blunkett is being urged to change police pension rules in a bid to ease cash pressure on the North Yorkshire force.

The call has come from York Labour MP Hugh Bayley, who is warning that almost a fifth of North Yorkshire police's annual budget is swallowed up by pension payments to retired officers.

Payments to retired officers account for 17 per cent of the police authority's annual budget - compared with a national average of only 13 per cent.

Mr Bayley said there were two long-standing reasons for pension payments making such a huge dent in the authority's finances.

Firstly, the force has one of the highest rates for officers taking early retirement on medical grounds.

The 37 local retirements on the grounds of ill-health last year accounted for almost 58 per cent of the total number of officers standing down.

The figure - the third highest in the country - was significantly above the target set by ministers of 33 per cent.

The second explanation, according to Mr Bayley, is that officers move to North Yorkshire later in their careers.

Many start out in big cities such as Manchester or Leeds, which suffer problems such as gun crime, but are transferred to more rural areas as they get older.

The problem this presents to North Yorkshire is that the force an officer is serving at the time of retirement is the one which must pay their full pension costs.

Now Mr Bayley is urging Mr Blunkett to introduce a new system, which would involve pensions being paid from a single Government pot - rather than the budgets of individual forces.

The MP said this would ensure the burden is spread equally across the country.

He added: "One of the reforms most badly needed is reform of police pensions, because the cost of pensions bears much more heavily on some police authorities than others. It's effect is especially heavy on North Yorkshire."

Mr Blunkett said the Government had accepted that police reform was "necessary".

He is expected to publish proposals for change later in the year.

North Yorkshire Police spokesman Tony Lidgate said the force received a large number of applicants each year and could choose the "cream of applicants" from other forces.

But he denied that there was a trend for older police officers to move to the county.

He said the force had been urging pension reform for some time.

Updated: 11:24 Wednesday, April 24, 2002