£600,000 bill sent to Government to meet the price of policing operation

The county’s Police Authority, which oversees the force budget, is now applying to the Government for cash to help meet some of the costs.

But under the rules of the Bellwin scheme - set up to help pay for costs when dealing with major incident and disasters - any police authority which applies must pay the first 490,000 of any claim made.

It means each district affected by the floods will have to find the cash from its own budgets to pay for the costs incurred, such as overtime and special policing operations needed to cope with the disaster.

Damage to police property and vehicles is also expected to cost the force another 200,000.

Main Street police station in Rotherham had to be closed at the height of the floods and training facilities in Ecclesfield are thought to be beyond repair.

Acting Deputy Chief Constable Bob Dyson said the costs could be met, but some projects may face slight delays as a consequence.

“The force as a whole has been left with a bill in the region of 600,000 but that is likely to continue to rise during the recovery process because although the water may have gone there are still issues to deal with, such as extra patrols in areas where people have been forced to evacuate their homes,” he said.

“The floods presented the force with an unprecedented level of demand and we responded to that in order to protect the public and respond to other calls that came in.”

He said the cash would come from district budgets, meaning there “will be less to go around” but said in the context of the force’s entire policing budget of more than 200 million the costs could be met without services suffering.

“District commanders have devolved budgets which allow them to move money around to meet unforeseen circumstances and we do have some central contingency funds which can be drawn upon,” he added.

“This bill won’t reduce policing services but may mean that some projects get held back for a while, however the fact that we launched Operation Impact this week with a high level of resources shows our resolve.”

He said the force response to the flooding crisis was “a huge success”.

“The force coped using its own resources and in partnership with other agencies, without having to bring people in from other forces to help,” he added.

“The dedication of our staff was outstanding - I came across one sergeant who worked 24 hours and still didn’t want to go home.

“There were people ringing in on their days off offering to come in and special constables gave up their day jobs to come and help.

“It was good to see.”