Scottish police numbers will not fall this year, despite financial pressures.

The national force's main police watchdog is currently looking in to the long-term shape of policing after the SNP earlier this year dropped its pledge to keep a minimum of 17,234 officers.

But Andrew Flanagan, chairman of the Scottish Police Authority or SPA, has dismissed tabloid reports that hundreds of officers will be axed as the force struggles to balance its books as "hyperbole".

Mr Flanagan, who is currently marking a year in post, said no decision on the future demographics of policing had been made - and that even if it had, it would take years to implement.

Speaking to The Herald, he said: "I don't see a situation where the 17,234 would change this financial year.

"I actually don't know whether 17,234 is the right number or not because we have no demand and capacity model."

The SPA expects to have completed a study of how many officers it needs by the end of the calendar year, in time to launch a consultation to take it to the end of this financial year.

The SNP ahead of this year's Holyrood elections dropped the 17234 commitment - a nine-year-old pledge it introduced to keep officer numbers 1000 above the figure it inherited when it first came to office.

Policing sources had lobbied the party that the pledge was tying the hands of the force, making it harder to spend scare resources on other types of worker, such as civilian cybercrime investigators.

Mr Flanagan said: ""It's unlikely that we are not going to resource cyber. Does that mean you have to have fewer police officers? Possibly. But there may be other issues that we4 need to deal with."

Police Scotland is currently dealing with an £11m budget shortfall, a tiny fraction of its £1bn income. However, Mr Flanagan acknowledged that it would be tough for the force to close this gap with almost all of its spending on pay, which cannot be easily reduced.

Police officers cannot be made redundant. That means any reduction in their numbers would come through retirements and natural "attrition". Given that the force needs to continue to recruit - reports of a recruitment freeze were dismissed as inaccurate last week - this means it could take years to trim the force of just a few hundred warranted officers.

Mr Flanagan said stakeholders - by which he meant politicians and commentators - may have to rethink outdated notions of "bobbies on the beat" and a "visible frontline" as the measure of police numbers.

He said: "The front line is a nice and easy way to articulate between those who delivering service and those who are supporting people who deliver the service. But delivering service is not necessarily a highly visible activity.

"Cyber crime is the easiest example of this. You are not going to see a police officer or somebody else solving crime online. "But in general policing years ago was a external activity. Now it is often indoors, with crimes like domestic abuse."

Mr Flanagan acknowledges that police officers on the streets still have a reassurance role, the so-called sentinel effect. But he stressed that there would always be "guys in yellow jackets going through doors".

The SPA chairman denied Police SCotland was in crisis, financial or otherwise. He said the current strategic review, he said, was bigger than current financial problems. He said: "Too much of the debate to date is about money. That stems back to the original case being made for Polce Scotland was about a single force being less costly. But a single force can also deliver a better service."