Ms Cooper said her  “neighbourhood policing guarantee” would be fit for the modern age with the £360 million plan seeing patrols return to town centres and making sure “communities and residents know who to turn to when things go wrong, with new statutory responsibilities on forces to protect and deliver neighbourhood policing”.

She said she wanted to modernise the traditional core of British policing - the bobby on the beat - with better training and new technology to provide data which would enable officers to target crime hotspots, react quickly and build partnerships to solve problems.

Hertfordshire Police Federation chair Luke Mitchell said he backed the idea of extra investment in community policing.

He said: “I have said many times that the Government has really got to step up to the mark when it comes to funding and resourcing the police service and the shadow home secretary’s announcement suggests she takes this issue seriously.

“We have successful neighbourhood policing teams in our major towns in Hertfordshire and know how successful that model can be with the proper backing.”

Sergeant Craig Butler, whose team of seven PCs and three PCSOs is based in Watford, said neighbourhood policing was still hugely important despite societal changes and an ever changing criminal justice landscape.

He said: “Our officers definitely still feel that sense of connection with our communities.

“I am not only dealing with the people I used to deal with 10 years ago but also their kids and in some cases their grandkids.

“They still know me and I still know them and people are more happy to talk to you if there is that relationship so being out on the street and being out on the beat is only going to help.

“Members of the public love seeing us out and about but community policing for me is all about the relationships, not just with the public but with our partners and how we can work together to create safer neighbourhoods.”

In her speech at the Institute for Government think tank, Ms Cooper said: “Thirty years ago this year Labour shadow home secretary Tony Blair said our party would be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’.

“It was right then, it’s right now. It’s what we did then, it’s what we’ll do again.”

Ms Cooper said the plan for extra neighbourhood police officers would be underpinned by new legislation and gave details on how it would be funded.

She said: “The £360 million we have estimated from the savings is actually a very cautious estimate based on a lot of the work that's been done by procurement experts.

“There’s a whole range of areas where they absolutely could be cutting down on waste and making those savings in practice. And as I said, the Police Foundation’s estimate was in fact that the savings will be well over £600 million from these kinds of programmes.”

The shadow home secretary also said in her speech that Labour would “most urgently” introduce new mandatory requirements on vetting, standards, training, and misconduct across the police.

She said: “It means new leadership from a Labour Home Office to set out active strategies in vital areas - including on violence against women and girls, on fraud, on youth violence, on antisocial behaviour.

“And we will work not just with the police and the criminal justice system but with councils, community groups, businesses, the NHS, schools and the voluntary sector.

“And it means reforms right across the criminal justice system, so more criminals can be charged and punished while more victims get justice.”