“There needs to be continued investment in policing”

SOUTH Yorkshire Police Federation wants getting more officers on the beat to be a top policing priority for the new Government.

Whichever party holds the keys to Number 10 after the General Election needs to ‘maintain an uplift’ in recruitment and continue to invest in policing in the years to come, Federation Chair Steve Kent said.

Measures need to be in place to defuse the potential ‘time bomb’ of officers’ mental health welfare too.

South Yorkshire is due to recruit some 1,300 more officers over the next three to four years – with the officer uplift and replacing those retiring and resigning – and Steve wants to ensure proper provisions are in in place to protect them from the strains of the job.

“[The new Government] needs to maintain uplift. It can’t just be a quick hit of 20,000 because that just gets us back to where we were.

“There needs to be continued investment in policing and also the infrastructure that’s needed to bring those new officers in,” he said.

“They need to put in proper provisions to deal with stress in the workplace in policing as I think it’s a bit of a time bomb that’s going to go off at some point.

“It’s already starting to creep so we need to focus on giving forces ring-fenced financial budgets to improve the occupational health provision, which will hopefully lead to our aim that every cop, every frontline officer or public facing officer has an annual one-to-one counselling discussion.

“It should be a matter of course. That’s what we should be striving towards.”

It’s a key issue which the Federation hopes whoever is Home Secretary after the December poll will take onboard.

“They need to get people back [into policing], get cops looked after, get cops’ salaries back up to where they should be, and let’s get officers recognised for what they do,” Steve said.

“We need legislation in place to protect officers properly and for them to feel secure doing their jobs on a day-to-day basis.”