‘Shattered’ Officers Must Be Allowed To Take Leave

OFFICERS are busier than ever in a “perfect storm” of demand, but South Yorkshire Police Federation has managed to prevent many officers’ leave being cancelled.

Chair Steve Kent said: “Cops have never felt busier than they do now. They are absolutely shattered. There is a perfect storm of demand, where we’ve got derbies in the football, the night-time economy, and obviously the pandemic. We don’t have enough resources to deal with stuff as much as we would like to, so it means officers are having to work longer to just do the bare necessities, which is wearing them out.”

But he said the Federation had fought to protect officers’ vital leave days, and that fewer of them had been cancelled than they had anticipated. But it had been a difficult balancing act, he added.

Steve said: “What we can do is try to protect officers’ days off as much as possible and, thankfully, as a Federation we have managed to move away from the large-scale cancellation of leave. To be fair to the force, they are working with us on this to try to make sure the impact is minimised as much as possible.

“But we’re between a rock and a hard place, because on the one hand we’re trying to prevent officers not having their days off cancelled and not working all hours, but on the other we’ve then got fewer officers on the frontline who can do the back-up for their colleagues. So we’re just desperately trying to find that balancing act.”

Earlier this month, the force responded to Steve’s concerns, saying they recognised the pressures that officers were under. Speaking to the Sheffield Star, Chief Inspector Lydia Lynskey said: “We recognise the challenges our officers have faced throughout this pandemic and we are immensely proud of how hard they have worked in such unprecedented circumstances.”

In an attempt to give tired officers some respite, the Federation has been going from station to station in South Yorkshire doing roadshows and offering support. Steve said: “We went out to Doncaster last Friday and handed out 120 bacon butties – it was a really positive day. We’re committed to doing that across the force for the next couple of months to give something back.”

But Steve said he realised that the pressure on officers was an ongoing issue and that he had made it clear to the force that it needed to stop enforced overtime in September. He said: “They need to take the pressure off officers, because they are absolutely knackered.”