Police officers are under pressure, but there is light at the end of the tunnel with the influx of new recruits, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
An extra 1,444 officers will join the force by March 2023, which includes the 479 new officers allocated by the National Police Uplift Programme.<\/p>\n
But Chair Steve Kent warned that it might take until the end of the year for the new officers to properly bed in.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe still have the same challenges as last year, but with the recruits starting to bed in gradually over the year we are going to start to see an improvement in terms of resilience, because we are still a force who doesn\u2019t have enough cops.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are frantically working to get them through the door and get them trained and up to speed as quickly as possible. So even though there\u2019s a light at the end of the tunnel, we\u2019re still just halfway through that tunnel.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the new officers would help the force function better and \u201crelieve a bit of the pressure\u201d.<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cObviously, with the expectations around performance, it means that the force is still always at the red line.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next six months, towards the end of the year, is when these numbers will properly start to bed in. It\u2019s a real positive that we\u2019re getting recruits through the door, but the negative side of it is that we\u2019ll have quite an inexperienced workforce that we\u2019ll need to upskill very quickly, which isn\u2019t always that easy.\u201d<\/p>\n