South Yorkshire summit in Westminster over police cuts

A WESTMINSTER summit has taken place between South Yorkshire Police Federation officers and six MPs in the region to outline concerns about the cuts to policing in England and Wales.

Seven representatives from the Federation spent an hour with their local MPs – all from the Labour Party – at the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday 11 September. “We wanted to air our views about the way the police service will look in the future,” said Jim Lucas, federation secretary.

Pictured in London at the meeting are (from left to right) PC Lisa Kramer, Insp Tim Mitchel, PC Zuleika Payne, Sgt Dean Hague, Mr Lucas, Sgt David Baines and Insp Richard Batty.

“We pointed out that the cuts are going to be detrimental to the public,” added Mr Lucas. “We are going to see a reduced service. At the moment we can agree we are all at the bottom of these cuts. The full impact has not been realised yet. It will be in 2014/15/16.

“You also look at the morale in the service. You can now see the effects of Winsor are starting to bite more and more. People’s wages are being altered and their pensions are changing. Officer morale is going down.

“There is no one there to take up this extra work – you have less resources and yet more pressure being put on remaining officers to do that work.”

At the meeting were John Healey, MP for Wentworth and Dearne, Meg Munn, MP for Sheffield Heeley, Clive Betts, MP for for Sheffield South East, Dan Jarvis MP for Barnsley central, Kevin Barron, MP for Rother Valley, and a representative of Sarah Champion, MP for Rotherham.

Mr Lucas added: “From the meeting we are now going to provide them with evidence of where we can see these cuts will have an effect on front line policing – then hopefully we can have another meeting where we can enforce what is happening.

“They need to know.

“We are going to gather the evidence by speaking to officers – finding out what the staffing levels have been on shifts at certain times, different times of the day. And get a snap shot. Look at the number of incidents we have got that are coming in. Look at the incidents that have not been addressed prior to the next shift coming on. That is a good gauge. We need to get first-hand what is happening and then present that to MPs.”

There were 129,584 police officers in the 43 police forces of England and Wales as at 31 March 2013 – down from 133,237. In South Yorkshire Police there are now 2,767 police officers.

Mr Lucas concluded: “The senior command team in South Yorkshire Police are fully aware of the implications of Winsor – and the effect it has on officers and they have a bank account that is dwindling because of the cuts.

“So they are having to provide a service with diminished funds. We understand that. We all understand that the public service is facing cuts. But when you look what we do – upholding the law – we’ve got to ensure the public are safe. And the Government need to know that.”