Training Injuries Prompt South Yorkshire Changes

New figures show that 142 South Yorkshire officers were injured from police training from 2022-2025.

Across the UK, 5,359 were recorded from training in the same period.

South Yorkshire Police Federation has been working to ensure officers are properly trained to protect themselves from injury on duty, and Chair Steve Kent acknowledged the force for supporting this piece of work.

He said: “We identified this problem two years ago and we served the force with a health and safety improvement notice. We also identified some issues in terms of the way that training was run and the force absolutely took that on board.

“Officers are getting assaulted on duty, so the training needs to be robust. But the training also needs to be a safe environment that ties in with health and safety regulations. It absolutely has to be done correctly.”

Steve said the nature of the job meant that there would always be injuries, but that the figures are now much more acceptable than they have been in the past.

He added: “We are ahead of the curve in dealing with this and fewer officers are being injured as a result, which is a real success. I am pleased to note that the training team within the force listened to our concerns, worked with us and we have all seen improvements since.”