Police are looking to shed 170 roles in a bid to save $53 million over four years to meet the government's cost-cutting directive.

Commissioner Andrew Coster says the change proposal to staff on Tuesday did not include any frontline services.

"We remain committed to delivering our core services as an organisation and focusing on becoming more visible, reassuring and responsive."

The proposed changes involved:

• Disestablishing 248 roles (of which 128 are currently vacant)
• Creating 78 roles
• A net reduction of 170 roles

"It's estimated this would achieve a saving of $53m over four years, however, we will not know the full extent of the savings until after final decisions are made in October," Andrew says.

Consultation would be carried out over the next three weeks.

Meanwhile, a separate voluntary redundancy process was underway, which would run until the end of November.

"This is not open to constabulary staff. This will help achieve further savings in some cases, and reassignment opportunities for affected staff in other cases."

The New Zealand Police Association head Chris Cahill says the proposal was large and reached across many parts of the Police organisation.

"The association's key priority is to support those members whose jobs will be disestablished but the full extent of the process will not be fully understood until there is clarity around the number of vacancies that currently exist and the outcome of the voluntary redundancy process."

The union's over-riding measure was to avoid any impact on frontline policing, Chris says.

"The association has already indicated most roles described as 'corporate support' do contribute to the operational role of frontline officers.

"This is potentially problematic given the government directive that the frontline should not be impacted by any proposed job losses."

-RNZ