It is a step forward that the Home Affairs Committee is shining a light on the problems with DG6 and working to improve the issue, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
The Police Federation of England and Wales has been lobbying the Government to amend the Data Protection Act in its campaign #SimplifyDG6. Changes made by the CPS to disclosure rules forced investigating officers to spend at least an extra four hours on every case for redaction, which in some cases has resulted in victims withdrawing from cases as a result of a much slower system.<\/p>\n
The Home Affairs Committee has now urgently recommended that the Home Office identify potential solutions.<\/p>\n
South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent said: \u201cThis is so important. It absolutely boggles me that officers are having to waste their time just to fulfil the mandate of the Crown Prosecution Service; it\u2019s nonsensical. It takes up hundreds and hundreds of hours of South Yorkshire Police Detectives\u2019 hours on a weekly basis because they\u2019re doing stuff which is just totally unnecessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cDetectives submit all these files and either nothing is done with them, or they end up not being\u00a0 necessary because there are different evidential thresholds that are required if somebody\u2019s pleading guilty, or not guilty. But officers are having to provide the same amount of information either way. So what would normally be maybe one or two hours of work turns into six or seven hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s other departments\u2019 bureaucracies that are dictating the strain and workloads that our Detectives are under. It\u2019s absolutely crazy. I welcome that the MPs are looking at this now and are starting to shine a light on it.\u201d<\/p>\n