CUSTOMS staff are preparing to work their last shifts at Poole Port and Bournemouth Airport before they are drafted into mobile teams.

Under the new arrangements, all permanent staff will be withdrawn from Bournemouth and Poole tomorrow and will instead travel around the South of England, focusing on problem areas like Heathrow, Gatwick and Dover.

Customs spokesperson Bob Gaiger said the change was necessary to tackle the problem of smuggling and said officers would be stationed in Bournemouth or Poole if the intelligence warranted it.

He said: "If we are trying to catch the modern day smuggler, who is well-financed and has a lot of resources available to him, then we have got to employ 21st century methods.

"We don't feel that having static staff at smaller, regional ports and airports waiting for the traffic to come to them is the best way of doing things.

"We are an intelligence-led organisation and as such, we need to deploy our officers where our intelligence suggests we have the greatest chance of catching smugglers."

But many Customs staff have criticised the change, claiming that people with families or responsibilities do not want to work away from home for seven days at a time.

A spokesperson for the Public and Commercial Services Union, who does not want to be named, said: "Staff are extremely angry; they have had a total of 17 days to make life-changing decisions."

And he repeated fears that withdrawing static staff would give smugglers free rein at Poole Port and Bournemouth Inter-national Airport.

He said: "If smugglers have a choice of entering the country through Dover or Gatwick where there are hundreds of officers or through Poole or Bournemouth which are empty, it's obvious which option they will choose."