A TEAM of Wiltshire Police officers are shaving their heads in support of colleague Mel Neal, who will have brain surgery next month.

Miss Neal, 31, who is a police officer in Chippenham, is nervous about the eight-hour operation which will remove a rare growth on her brain while she is awake.

She has given the nickname Cuthbert to her cavernoma, a collection of abnormal blood vessels that are not cancerous but can cause epileptic seizures or stroke.

Twitter users are following her story at @evictcuthbert and donations have poured in for charity Cavernoma Alliance UK, surpassing £2,000 in just a couple of days.

Miss Neal, who has a two-year-old daughter Poppy, said: “I found out last summer. I’d been getting really bad headaches, and balance issues, falling over when tying my shoelaces, and after a few months my fiancé ordered me to go to hospital and they found a shadow in my head.

"We called it Cuthbert because tumour sounded so aggressive, and nobody knew what a cavernoma was.

“The headshaves were PC Hayley Hardie’s idea. We were on our Christmas work do and she said, because I have to lose mine for the surgery, she thought everyone should shave theirs with me.

"They’re an amazing bunch of people; I would be lost without them.”

Chippenham response team 1, including Inspector Chris Martin and Sergeants Andy Bevan and Louis McCoy, will all be going bald at Monkton Park Police Station on January 12.

Also joining in will be Miss Neal’s sister Emma Neal and fiancé Tim Harris.

The hair will be donated to the Little Princess Trust to be used by children with cancer.

“It would be a real shame for us all to lose that amount of hair just to put it in the bin,” said Miss Neal.

She is having the neurosurgery in January, at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital.

She said: “Thank you for all the donations.”

Donate at www.justgiving.com/hayley-hardie2