SOUTH Yorkshire Police is in the grip of a downward spiral of morale with officers\u2019 health and wellbeing suffering across the force, the local Federation has warned.<\/p>\n
Zuleika Payne, Chair of South Yorkshire Police Federation, said the fall in officer numbers is leaving officers sick, suffering and exhausted.\u00a0In 2010, there were 2,953 South Yorkshire Police officers. There are now 2,472. That’s 481 fewer.<\/p>\n
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Zuleika said: \u201cWe have seen a continuous downward trend in officer numbers. While we are currently recruiting police officers – the vision was that we would see intakes of 36 recruits every 3 months over the next four quarters. That said, we have also lost officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, for the first time, the force introduced a voluntary exit scheme from the organisation, and interest in this scheme is high amongst officers, we saw two tranches of officers exit the organisation in March and October – losing almost 80 police officers. \u00a0Not only does that impact upon us in a monetary sense, but sadly we lose a lot of experience and expertise.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re certainly not recruiting enough to arrive at a point where we see officer numbers where they were previously. What I\u2019m told is that, despite the recruiting that is forecast for the forthcoming 12 months, we won\u2019t actually arrive at an officer number that we experienced when we were at our peak.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuleika said she is concerned for the officers who remain, taking on more and more work.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cIt\u2019s only to be expected that, as the workload increases, fewer officers have to absorb more work which results in officers becoming exhausted to the point of burnout.<\/p>\n
\u201cOften officers are concerned about commencing a period of sickness absence, due to concern for their fellow colleagues in the workplace who are then left to absorb this extra work, so there\u2019s a reluctance for officers to take sick leave. It\u2019s for line managers to then monitor that sickness absence, which ultimately is a concern of the organisation, and then those that remain, working under increased pressure, often end up becoming unwell themselves. It\u2019s a vicious circle.\u201d<\/p>\n