Under-Resourced Officers Suffering High Levels Of Fatigue

South Yorkshire Police is one of the busiest forces in the country, yet one of the poorest-funded, so it’s no surprise that officers are suffering from fatigue, the Federation has said.

Nationally, nearly 70% of officers are experiencing high levels of fatigue, with 28.9% of officers reporting “very high levels”, according to the latest National Police Wellbeing Survey.

Steve Kent, Chair of South Yorkshire Police Federation, said these figures were lower than he’d expected from his experience of speaking to officers.

He said: “When I go out and speak to officers, it’s almost a universal feeling that they are absolutely knackered and fatigued. I’m sure it’s the same for our staff colleagues as well.

“South Yorkshire Police officers do an unbelievable job. We’re one of the busiest and highest-performing forces in the country, yet we’re one of the poorest-funded and poorest-resourced. That is an absolute testament to our officers and staff and how hard they’re working.

“It’s not the fault of our force that our resources aren’t there. We’re now at 3,100 officers, which is 350 down on where we were in 2010; meanwhile there’s an increase in certain types of crime.

“The only thing that’s going to improve this situation is to give the police in South Yorkshire more resources and better budgets, and also to give us the resources to do our job. That’s going to take yet another conversation with central Government about the funding formula, because it cannot be right that there are some forces with the same population and same levels of crime, yet they’ve got 800 more officers than us.”

Steve added: “The people of South Yorkshire, to be quite blunt, are being absolutely sold a kipper by central Government.”