“What Do We Want From Our Police Service Moving Forward…?”

POLICING cannot continue to deliver what the public expects the police to deliver, whilst officers are tied up dealing with the overflow of other public services, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.

Andy Cooke, the new head of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services, told MPs in March that up to 40% of officers’ time is taken up on mental health calls.

Mr Cooke told the Home Affairs Select Committee: “An awful lot of Police Officers’ time is taken up looking for children missing from home and absent from care.

“If that’s what the public and Parliament want Policing to do, that’s fine. But you must bear in mind while they’re doing that, they’re not doing other things that they should be doing, like detecting crime.

“With the wide scope that Policing has, in my view there needs to be a decision made in relation to what we want from our police service moving forward, and whether other agencies need to step into some parts of that sphere.”

Responding, Steve Kent, Chair of South Yorkshire Police Federation, said: “This echoes comments and the view that SYPF have been pushing for some time including a recent article in the regional press. It is encouraging to see this coming from other angles as well.

“We cannot continue to deliver what the public rightly expects the police to deliver, whilst we are tied up dealing with the overflow of other public services….this isn’t necessarily a criticism of those services who themselves are stretched and overwhelmed, but we cannot continue to be set up to fail by not being able to deal with what our primary responsibility is… policing.”