“No reasonable person happy” to pay for South Yorkshire Police’s legacy costs in wake of grooming scandal

South Yorkshire Police’s budget has set aside around £5.8m this year for claims against the force as a result of the Hillsborough football disaster and child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.

Dr Alan Billings, South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner, raised the council tax precept to pay for policing by £15 per annum for a Band D property this year, and said that government funding “falls short of what is needed to maintain an effective and efficient police force.”

However, during yestrday’s full council meeting, leader of the Rotherham Conservatives councillor Simon Ball, asked the chair of South Yorkshire’s police and crime committee if they were “happy that residents of Rotherham are having to pay an increased precept to cover the failures of South Yorkshire Police over CSE and elsewhere?

“No reasonable peron…is happy to pay for this,” added coun Ball.

“This should have come out of earmarked reserves that this force holds”

Councillor Rukhsana Haleem, chair of the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Panel, resonded: “No, I think any of us paying the precept would prefer not to have to pay for the consequences of things that have gone wrong in the past.

“Whilst the government meets most of what are reffered to as legacy costs, there is a requirement for the force to make a contribution towards that.

“If the government wants to contribute more in order to reduce the burden on council taxpayers, then I would welcome that.”