Revealed: Number of South Yorkshire Police officers sacked from force over last year
Newly-released figures have revealed the number of police officers dismissed from South Yorkshire Police over the last year.
The College of Policing have this week (Wednesday, October 15, 2025) released their latest tranche of data, for the period running between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025.
During that time, a total of 20 South Yorkshire Police officers were dismissed or barred from the force, representing a rise of four or 25 per cent rise, when compared to the same period in 2023 and 2024.
Of the 20 SYP officers dismissed or barred from the force over the last year, seven - or 35 per cent - were dismissed whilst still serving.
Sixty per cent of officers - or 12 out of 20 - were dismissed post-resignation, and one officer was dismissed post-retirement, which equates to five per cent of the total number of affected officers.
Responding to the figures, Det Supt James Axe, Head of SYP’s Professional Standards, said: "The overwhelming majority of officers and staff here at South Yorkshire Police are steadfastly committed to helping and supporting the public and their colleagues, doing all the right things for the right reasons and reflecting our force values of fairness, integrity and trust.
"Sadly, as is the case across society, there will always be those who fail to reflect these values. The latest annual figures show that 20 officers have been dismissed from our ranks. While this is just a fraction of a per cent of our workforce, it reflects our ongoing commitment to maintaining public trust and confidence, and ensuring only those who uphold the high standards the public rightly expect and deserve have a place in SYP.
"We always take reports of unacceptable and inappropriate behaviour seriously, and remain determined to work hard to protect vulnerable people and pursue offenders."
During the same period, the Metropolitan Police was the force to dismiss the highest number of officers with 183; followed by Greater Manchester, with 43; Thames Valley with 40; West Midlands with 37 and West Yorkshire with 31.
Assistant Chief Constable Tom Harding, Director of Operational Standards at the College of Policing, said the figures show a “determined and robust effort from police forces to rid policing of officers whose behaviour falls below the high standards that we, and the public, expect from them.”
ACC Harding continued: “It goes without saying that any time an officer’s behaviour breaches professional standards, or even strays into criminality, it leaves a permanent stain on the reputation of policing.
“But the public can have confidence that their police forces are quickly identifying and dealing with unacceptable behaviour from officers and staff, who, through being on the barred list, will never work in policing again.”
The message is clear: our policing system is built on upholding our Code of Ethics, on courage, respect and empathy, and public service, and there is no place in our police service for anyone whose behaviour goes against these values.”
Across the 43 police forces in England and Wales, a total of 1,149 officers were dismissed between April 2024 and March 2025.
The figures show that the most common reasons for dismissal across the 43 forces are: dishonesty with 126 cases; discriminatory behaviour with 95; unlawful access or disclosure of information with 82 cases; inappropriate communications with 81 and sexual offences or misconduct with 72.
The College of Policing does not provide a breakdown by category of dismissal for each police force, however.
The figures also show that the number of SYP officers dismissed in the 2024/25 year is double that forced to leave during the 27-month period running between December 2017 and March 2020, when 10 lost their jobs.
Since then, the College of Policing figures show that there has been a steady rise in the number of officers being dismissed from the force, with five recorded in 2020/21; three recorded in 2021/22; seven recorded in 2022/23 and 16 in 2023/24.
When combined with the most recent set of figures for 2024/25, a total of 60 police officers have been dismissed from the force since December 2017.
ACC Harding added: “The message is clear: our policing system is built on upholding our Code of Ethics, on courage, respect and empathy, and public service, and there is no place in our police service for anyone whose behaviour goes against these values.”