Far-right demonstrations cost South Yorkshire £2.5m

ALMOST £6 million has been spent policing far-right demonstrations and counter rallies outside London in the past two years.

South Yorkshire Police spent £2.5m on policing such events.

The force is one of three – along with West Yorkshire and the West Midlands – accounting for more than two thirds of the total expenditure, acquiring a bill of more than £4.1m between them.

And around £10m has been spent by the Metropolitan Police on events staged in London, including protests by groups such as the EDL and Britain First over the same time period.

Neil Bowles, chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation, said it was a “drain on resources”.

He said: “It is a big bite on our funding that could be spent correcting, probably, what they are demonstrating about. The more they come the less we have got to spend on general policing in the county. Obviously we are concerned.”

He added: “It’s a democratic right to protest and it’s the police’s job to facilitate that as far as we can go. What we do object to is the continual protest and disruption to certain communities about the same point.

“So that’s why our command team and crime commissioner are trying to approach the Home Office for either some assistance in the funding or actually to actually change the public order laws about restricting certain demonstrations but that is always going to be difficult in a democratic society.”

Rotherham has seen an increasing number of far-right and counterdemonstrations and a single EDL march in Rotherham in September 2014 racked up a bill of just over a £1m.

Mr Bowles said that it is the communities that facilitate the protests that end up suffering in the long-run.

He warned that there is a “lasting effect” left on local people, with businesses “fed up to their back teeth” of losing out on customers when a demonstration is taking place.

Mr Bowles was talking to the Huffington Post, which released the figures last month.