Officer Uplift Must Do More Than Backfill Gaps

FURTHER investment is needed at South Yorkshire Police to ensure the force can fight evermore demanding and sophisticated types of crime, the force’s Federation has said.

After the recent investment and ‘uplift’ recruitment programme is complete, the force will be staffed by around 3,300 officers. But this will merely bring South Yorkshire Police back to 2010 levels, according to Chair Steve Kent.

Steve called for a continued investment from Government that would allow for up to 4,000 officers for South Yorkshire.

He explained: “That is where we need to be. The Government keeps saying, ‘Right, we’ve got the numbers up now, problem solved. The end’. Well, no it isn’t.

“We’ve now got a very young and inexperienced workforce. It’s going to take a long time for them to be bedded in to the experience and to be confident in what they’re doing.

“So now we need to wait and give those officers time to settle into what is an incredibly demanding job, and this is only repairing the damage that has been done by years of austerity. We have only put back what we had in the early 2000s and 2010s. We need to carry on and this needs to continue beyond that.”

Officer numbers have left the workforce a decade behind where it should be, which makes it harder to fight new demands, threats and emerging types of crime, Steve said.

He added: “Look at the way cybercrime is happening, look at the way certain other types of crime are coming in.

“It is a welcome move that domestic violence has now been expanded to deal with coercive and controlling behaviour, but we need more officers to deal with this. Not just the ones we’ve replaced.

“We need to keep investing going forward and we need to go well beyond the numbers of 2010. So it doesn’t go far enough.”