Public Backing For South Yorkshire Officers

SOUTH Yorkshire residents have the highest increase in confidence in their police force in the country, according to a new survey.

In the neighbourhoodalert.co.uk survey, 67.5% of respondents said they had increased confidence in the force.

Around 4,200 South Yorkshire people took part in the survey – only force areas with more than 900 respondents were included in the final results. South Yorkshire came top for this measure out of the 26 forces who qualified.

Federation Chairman Steve Kent said he was very proud of the force’s officers.

He said: “It’s absolutely vital that they’re recognised for this. This is down to the cops on the ground doing their very best to look after people.

“As we know, South Yorkshire has some of the poorer funding per population compared to other forces, and we’ve got some of the smallest numbers of officers when you compare with other similar-sized counties. So this is testament to the hard work the cops are doing out there to keep in touch with people and to carry on doing the good work that they do.

“I think the public appreciate how difficult it is for policing, so it’s probably coming down to great communication between officers and the public, and it’s a good story for them out there to recognise all the hard work that they’re doing.”

The recognition comes at a time when Steve says morale is still low, as officers are having to cope with increased workloads as well as deal with the Covid-19 crisis.

He said: “I like to think we’ve hit rock bottom and it will slowly start to pick up as soon as more cops come onto the street. I think that stories like this will help with morale because all we’re surrounded by in policing is negativity, and this is obviously a good change to that.

“I’ve said this in the past that South Yorkshire officers can say that they’re some of the hardest-working police officers in the country because we do the most with the least. We are one of the poorer-funded forces and it just shows how amazing the officers are that they get recognition despite those sort of restrictions in terms of budgets and resources.”