Town councillors have been made aware that from May police will no longer be providing officers for the purposes of road closures for civic and community events although no official announcement is expected for the next few weeks.
As reported in the Times last week the move will affect how events like the carnival, fireworks display, civic service and Remembrance parade are run.
Event organisers will now be responsible for traffic management and organising road closures and appropriate signage, traffic cones etc in association with Cornwall Council. It is believed the work involved, cost to organisers and potential safety risks could spell the end of some popular events across Devon and Cornwall.
At a town council meeting in Callington last week Cllr Andrew Long said the authority should start a campaign to get this decision reversed.
He said: 'We should not accept this decision. It could end up costing the police more money. At the moment a police officer's work at the carnival is done in about four hours, but it could end up costing them a lot more if we did the road closure and there was an accident.
'I propose we write to the chief constable asking for the reasons why this decision has been taken and what consultation has been done, because we have not been consulted and neither has county highways.'
He asked that the letter be copied to every parish, town and city council in Cornwall and Devon: 'We need to shout this from the rooftops because there are probably other towns which would be affected greatly by this.'
Cllr Chris Thomas said he was 'disgusted': 'It's going to affect the way people see the police — what do they think we pay them for?
'We pay them to look after us but we are seeing less and less of them, where is our money going?'
A police spokesman told the Times last week the police were currently in the process of starting communications with local authorities and negotiations with event organisers over how traffic management at pre-planned events would be dealt with in the future.