Winchester police station is set be axed in the latest phase of multi-million pound government cuts, bosses have confirmed.

The city’s beat areas will merge next year and some officers will work from a new base in Winnall Fire Station as Hampshire Constabulary cuts the North Walls base.

But police said that frontline staff and services would not be affected.

PC Joe Zubaidi told a Police and Communities Together (PACT) meeting last week that city beat officers will work from Mottisfont Court, which the force bought from Hampshire County Council in 2012.

“Loads of stations have closed all over the county and are being sold off,” he said.

“The areas are still covered - for example [in] Winchester, we won't own a police station but the response teams will be working out of the fire station.”

North Walls’ cells have already closed, forcing officers to drive to Basingstoke or Southampton to put people in custody.

Hampshire Constabulary has cut £55 million in the last four years and must save a further £25 million by 2017.

A police spokesman said the new facilities would be “fit for purpose in today’s economic climate.”

“This will result in no change to current service provision or number of officers,” she said. “We are moving, not leaving.”

North Walls station will stay open until a new base is found for neighbourhood officers “in the heart of the community,” she added.

Winchester’s beat areas – the city centre and a band of residential neighbourhoods – will merge from April.

PC Zubaidi said: “I think [numbers are] pretty much the same, but it will just be a case of we will go where the problems are. Personally I can’t imagine us being in the town centre any less, because there’s probably more problems there.”

The changes are the latest phase of a major restructure of the force, which will see more than 2,000 officers across the county relocated.

City centre councillor Ian Tait said the closure of North Walls was “regrettable” but better than losing frontline staff.

He said: “Operationally, I have no doubt that police are right. Few people ever go to the police station, but it’s that reassurance.

“It’s one of those things, a bit like the church and the pub. People expect there to be the police station.”

Cllr Dominic Hiscock said Winchester could cope without the station as long as the public knew exactly where they could go to see a police officer.

He said: “We need to have some sort of clear place where people can go to report crimes and get crime reference numbers, so they can make insurance claims. It’s ‘someone stole my purse’ stuff.”

Officers could work from public information points like the Discovery Centre or Guildhall tourism office, he suggested.

Solicitors in Winchester have long lamented the loss of the station's cells, which means people people arrested in the city are now taken to larger custody blocks in other towns.

Criminal lawyer Catherine Harrington said she had to drive to Southampton or Basingstoke every day at the taxpayers' expense to see clients held in regional custody hubs.

"It's appalling," she said. "It's an absolute outrage and a waste of public money. It's all very well cutting back public services, but you can't cut back public services and then blow money on able-bodied officers, the petrol and the car for all of us."

She said last Saturday she had to take a 50-mile round trip to Lyndhurst after arriving in Southampton to find its cells were full.

The future of the North Walls building is unclear, but the news comes two weeks after Winchester School of Art, which is next door to the station, announced that it was looking to expand its real estate.

Head of school Ed D’Souza told the Hampshire Chronicle that the school was at “maximum capacity” but lacked the land to extend its student base.