500 new police officers recruited in South Yorkshire in last three years

Out of the 20,000 new officers recruited to 43 police forces across England and Wales as part of the Government’s ‘uplift’ programme, the share allocated to South Yorkshire Police has been a total of 519 new recruits.

Papers that went before South Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Dr Alan Billings, in January 2023 state that the uplift programme means that Sheffield’s response teams should be ‘fully staffed’ by May 2023, providing ‘there are no leavers, and all officers are deployed to the response function’.

In addition, in a February 2023 blog post on his website, Dr Billings said he was proposing to recruit an additional 220 officers through a ‘local uplift,’ funded through a 6.7 per cent increase in the council tax precept for 2023/24 for South Yorkshire residents.

This would be along with 720 more officers ‘to fill vacancies left by officers retiring or leaving,’ resulting in a combined total of 1,444 new recruits and the force reaching projected staffing levels of 3,039 by March 2024.

Dr Billings acknowledged that the influx of new officers means the force will be ‘relatively young for a few years,’ but added that ‘those officers will gradually be making their presence felt in whichever part of South Yorkshire the Chief Constable determines they should serve’.

The Government’s target of 20,000 new officers has been met following a big rise of around 4,000 new police officers in the first quarter of 2023.

A Government spokesperson said: “Today’s announcement confirms that the Conservative Party has delivered on its 2019 manifesto commitment to hire 20,000 additional officers, bringing the total number of officers to a new record high.”

The Home Secretary, Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP, added: “Everyone deserves to feel safe in their communities, on their streets and in their homes. Now we’ve delivered on our 2019 manifesto promise, with more than 20,000 new police officers.

“With a record 150,000 police officers across England and Wales, people can trust in the Conservatives to keep our streets safe and deliver for local areas.”

However, the Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, Tweeted that the Government was trying to take the ‘country for fools on policing’ and had, in fact, cut 20,000 police officers.

Ms Cooper appears to have been referencing funding for policing being cut by 20 per cent between 2010 – when the Conservatives came to power – and 2019, resulting in around 20,000 fewer officers.

Dame Meg Hillier MP is the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which examines the value for money of Government projects, programmes and service delivery, and has warned that the success of the Government target of 20,000 new officers is the ‘narrowest of metrics’.

She added: “The process for assigning which force’s door these recruits go through is years out of date and the exercise does not appear to have progressed the urgent need to make forces more representative of the communities they serve.”

“If the promises of this recruitment are met, there will be a substantial increase in the number of criminal prosecutions brought before the courts which PAC recently reported are already facing a record and worsening backlog of cases,” she added.

“The Home Office and the wider criminal justice system do not yet seem to fully understand the extent of this impact and the serious risk it poses to any promised gains, in terms of cutting crime and increasing public safety, from the increased police numbers.”