SECURITY guards have been drafted in after vandals broke into Blackburn Police's new multi-million pound headquarters and went on the rampage.

CCTV cameras are erected at the site but failed to catch the raiders.

Windows were smashed, paint was splashed across the walls and all 15 fire extinguishers were emptied during the attack on the purpose-built headquarters, which is still under construction.

Extra workmen were drafted in to repair the damage and security patrols have now been placed at the site.

Police said they were treating the attack as a burglary and said it was "inconvenient." Nothing was stolen.

The state-of-the-art building, at Greenbank Business Park, Whitebirk, will replace the police station in Northgate.

Manchester-based builders Wates Construction, which was awarded the contract for the £5.6million site, still owns the property with the hand-over to police expected in September. Staff will move in soon after.

Project manager Paul Robinson said: "It was probably kids. They broke in at the bottom end and caused a bit of damage but nothing major.

"We have had to scrape paint off the walls and fill up all the fire extinguishers again but it has not really put us back.

"It could have been a lot worse and we have now got full-time guards. There was CCTV there but it didn't detect them."

A police spokesman said: "It's just inconvenient more than anything else. We are treating it as a burglary and investigating it as we would any other incident."

The three-storey headquarters will serve all of Eastern Division, which covers Blackburn, Darwen, Hyndburn and the Ribble Valley.

Police are also opening a £2.4m walk-in centre at Blackburn railway station when they move from Northgate, with the crumbling Victorian building to be sold off.

When the Home Office-funded scheme was first announced chief superintendent John Thompson said it was a "unique opportunity to design a new building to take police forward through the 21st century."

And he said although there might be hiccups, police expected the project would be completed on time, which was supposed to be June.

The new station will include a purpose-built custody suite complete with 42 cells and seven interview rooms.

An IT and communications suite, as well as a forensic investigation lab, also form part of the plans.

The new police base will not mean the closure of either Great Harwood or Accrington police stations.