Officers ‘Stretched To Their Limits’

“Our officers are breaking out there – they are stretched to their limits.”

That was South Yorkshire Police Federation’s reaction to a new report into police productivity from the National Audit Office (NAO), which found that the pressures facing policing risked damaging frontline services.

The spending watchdog found that the Home Office had “not fully understood the implications” of the financial pressure on the police service, and said that forces will need to make “significant savings” if they are to meet the Government’s commitments on crime.

In the past financial year, police forces reduced their reserves by £276 million and funded 60% of capital programmes (police buildings, vehicles and equipment) by borrowing £632 million.

Steve Kent, Chair of South Yorkshire Police Federation, said: “This is what the Federation and I have been saying for years now – that the challenges facing policing are growing, with ever wider expectations that we will take on new types of crime, and get involved in the work of other public-sector jobs.

“The frontline is stretched extremely thin, and nowhere more than South Yorkshire, where our resourcing and budgets are some of the tightest in the country compared to the demands we face.”

Steve said that the risks were “enormous”. He continued: “It feels like we’re playing whack-a-mole and fighting fire rather than trying to deal with the core issues of what is going on within our communities.

“The solution has to be that the Government recognises we cannot be the service of last resort for every other department and that we don’t have anywhere near enough resources or finances to address this. There needs to be an urgent rethink on how policing is funded.

“This has to be done as a matter of urgency because, as I’ve said time and time again, our officers are breaking out there – they are stretched to their limits.”