South Yorkshire Police Has ‘Nowhere Near Enough Officers’ To Cope With Demand

South Yorkshire Police still doesn’t have enough officers to cope with demand, the Police Federation has said.

New Government data shows that South Yorkshire Police has 215 officers per 100,000 people, which is higher than many other forces across the country, but South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent said that figure needed to be put in perspective.

He said: “This is still nowhere near enough officers, as South Yorkshire has some of the most deprived areas in the country. We have some of the most demand per officer, i.e. incidents of crime, and the least budget per officer in the country.

“So we have to flip this around. We are naturally going to need more officers per 100,000 people when we’ve got higher crime and higher deprivation. We have 3,100 officers now and we were at 3,400 in 2010, before austerity. We need to be on a minimum of 3,400 police officers to even tread water. So we’re not anywhere near where we need to be.”

The Government data also showed that, between March 2024 and March 2025, the number of neighbourhood policing officers and PCSOs in South Yorkshire Police fell by 16.4%; this was the second largest percentage decrease in the country.