Thousands of crimes including housebreaking, car theft and vandalism are to be investigated by specially trained civilian staff under a radical new scheme being piloted in one Scottish town.

Under a £250,000 initiative funded by the Scottish Government, door-to-door inquiries, interviews and crime reports are to be carried out by investigative assistants who will be overseen by police officers.

The pilot, which will begin on April 1 in Falkirk, will free up some 10% of frontline officers and will run for 12 months, at the end of which it is expected to be rolled out across the force and potentially across the country.

The new Priority Crime Unit will deal with level three and four crimes including fireraising and housebreaking. In the Falkirk area last year there were more than 7000 crimes in these two categories. The new unit is expected to investigate at least half of these over the coming 12 months.

Under the scheme, when members of the public phone to report crimes they will be logged and handled by experienced police officers who will decide how to divide cases between civilians and police officers.

"We have identified that when you are investigating these crimes around 65% of the work does not require the powers of a police officer," said Andrew Cameron, Chief Constable of Central Scotland Police.

"It is not just about building up more capacity by taking away the administrative chores but it is about trying to make sure that the skills sets that we have are used to their full potential.

"This is a first in Scotland. If other chief constables can be persuaded, we believe this will lead to more community officers on the frontline and a much better quality of service to victims.

"The eight chief constables are totally signed up to the idea that we need to be innovative and creative in terms of the fact that we are facing increasing levels of demand and the same level of budget.

"We cannot continue to deliver operational policing in the way we are doing at the moment. We need to re-think what we actually expect of our officers."

Other forces, such as Tayside, are also looking at ways to streamline their forces and create more civilian posts.

As part of its wider modernisation programme, Central Scotland has also identified a further 120 positions across the force which could benefit from civilianisation.

The unit will work on every level of the investigation, including conducting interviews, door-to-door inquiries and drafting reports for the procurators-fiscal.

It will be run by a sergeant who will be assisted by four detective constables, eight civilian assistant investigators and two civilian co-ordinators.

The new investigators have already undergone an intensive three-week training programme which included interview skills, lessons on Scots law and police driving.

At least two of the civilian investigators, who will be paid about £22,000 a year, but will not be in uniform, were formerly police officers.

Joe Grant, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, said: "We are keen to ensure that this does not dumb down the investigative powers of police officers, but the force has reassured us that these people will be dealing with specific crimes with set parameters.

"We do not want to end up de-skilling police officers but we are keen for this sort of pilot to work and keen that it frees up frontline policing."

Bill Aitken, the Tory justice spokesman and convener of the Justice Committee, said the committee will be visiting the pilot next month.

"We want to look at this to see how frontline police resources can be released with the use of civilianisation," he said. "The obvious downside is that certain work can only be done by a sworn police officer, but I will be interested to see how this works."

Pauline McNeill, Labour's justice spokeswoman, said she was seriously concerned about the move.