Reforms To Public Services Could Free Up Millions Of Police Hours A Year

A reform of public services in order to reduce admin is “absolutely needed”, the Chair of South Yorkshire Police Federation has said, but he added that officers will want to know what it will mean in practice.

A Government review found that some public servants are forced to waste a day each week on administrative tasks. The improvements the Chancellor is considering could free up over 38 million police hours each year – almost 750,000 hours every week – for police officers to perform frontline duties.

South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent said: “This is absolutely needed and it’s something that we’ve been saying for years. But I want to see what this looks like in reality.

“We are already, in this force, implementing Right Care, Right Person, which is now going national. It’s about getting the appropriate public authority to deal with the stuff they should be dealing with and leaving the police to stuff that we deal with. Hopefully that will free up time for officers.

“There’s also the work going on about disclosure, from our Detective colleagues in the Federation. These are simple wins that the Government could look at and deal with very quickly, but it’s got to keep going beyond that.

“We’ve got to stop with the mindless bureaucracy that exists every time an officer arrests somebody. The public would be shocked if they knew how many hours it took to arrest somebody for stealing a bottle of whisky from a supermarket. That’s an officer off the frontline for potentially six hours.

“Something has to be done to bring things back down to basics. That includes making the file system simpler for our police colleagues across the force, and also just cutting down on some of the red tape.”

Steve added that he hoped these changes could return officers to more proactive policing.

He continued: “Our officers are doing the absolute best they can, but with the resources we’ve got, all we’re doing is chasing our tails. When I first joined the police 20 years ago, you had some capacity to proactively target an area where there’s nuisance youths or there’s drug dealing. That kind of stuff for the frontline just doesn’t exist at the moment.

“We’re responding to everything rather than proactively trying to do stuff. What this would do is free up time for officers to go out and be what the public want them to be. To be bobbies on the beat – the vast majority of the public want to see police officers out, snooping around, doing our job. If people are acting suspiciously and you’ve got grounds to search them, 99% of cops would love the opportunity to do that. But as soon as they consider it, the radio goes again.”