Police funding: Government must end the postcode lottery of funding

SOUTH Yorkshire Police Federation has called on the Government to end the postcode lottery of police funding in order to help them recover from being one of the poorest funded forces in the country.

Policing has lost 19% of funding since austerity began in 2010, leading to a loss of more than 21,000 frontline officers in England and Wales

Throughout that time, crime and violent crime has continued to rise.

The Chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation Steve Kent has called on Government to make sure South Yorkshire Police is given the major funding boost it needs when the next policing budget is announced in the New Year.

He said: “South Yorkshire Police are one of the poorest funded forces in the country. We’re a metropolitan force, but because of this a lot of our funding comes from council tax and rates and this results in us being one of the poorer forces.

“Looking at some similar sized forces – for example Merseyside – a similar population, and similar crime level, yet they’ve got an extra 1,300-ish cops to what we have.

“We really are on the ragged edge of policing.”

Steve has asked for a boost that puts South Yorkshire police back on a level playing field.

He added “I’d like to see the budget reflect the areas that we serve, and the fact that we are in high crime areas with a lot of poverty.

“We can’t see a postcode lottery. We need the budget for South Yorkshire to rise – we need to give our cops the correct kit, we need to upgrade our buildings, and we need to upgrade our fleet. We need the budget to make sure we can start making some positive changes.”