Get Rid Of Detectives’ Red Tape

Detectives must be freed up of red tape so they can deal with serious offences, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.

Thousands of officers in England and Wales are facing arduous workloads due to the unnecessary bureaucratic burden of redacting case files at the pre-charge stage.

The Police Federation of England and Wales has asked the Government to amend the Data Protection Act 2018 to enable police forces in England and Wales to safely share data with prosecutors at the pre-charge stage without excessive obligation to redact evidence. The Government has said it supports the amendment, but officers are still waiting for changes to be made.

Steve Kent, South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair, said: “We’ve got officers and detectives who are literally spending hours and hours doing stuff which will never be needed in court because of a guilty plea or whatever. It is an absolute farce.

“The Government has to stop being hypocritical about this and start being consistent. We totally support their stance on Right Care, Right Person, which is removing demand from the frontline, potentially, and quite rightly redressing the balance of which organisations deal what.

“But this in the detective world is almost their version of it. Why on earth are detectives having to spend hours and hours on this when they’ve got serious incidents and serious crimes that need to be looked at?”

Investigation departments are already understaffed and there are too few people looking to become detectives, Steve warned.

He added: “You wonder why. Detectives want to be out there dealing with serious offences. They don’t want to be spending five hours essentially doing administration tasks. This needs to change and it needs to change urgently, and I don’t know what the delay is with this.

“The Government just needs to make a decision alongside the Ministry of Justice to simplify matters. I can’t believe we’re still having this conversation.”