Police Federation calls for praise for South Yorkshire bobbies

Neil Bowles said officers are ‘working as hard as they can’ and are not happy at a series of critical inspections reports published over recent weeks.

He said the inspections, carried out by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, take up too much time when the force has 500 fewer officers than it did in 2009.

In HMIC’s Police Effectiveness reports, the force was judged good at preventing crime and anti-social behaviour and tackling serious and organised crime – but was warned it needs to improve the way it manages offenders and investigates crime.

Overall it was rated as ‘requiring improvement’ at keeping people safe and reducing crime.

Mr Bowles said: “The HMIC do not bring any money, they say, ‘Oh look, we’ll give you 10 recommendations’, they don’t give us any money to make those recommendations work, it’s got to come out of somewhere else.

“It’s getting ridiculous. Let’s just have one report, let’s have feedback about where we could improve and where we’re doing well, that’s all we require.

“Let’s have some praise for our officers. The only reason some performance has gone down is because we’ve got less officers to investigate crime.”

Deputy Chief Constable Dawn Copley said: “We welcome the feedback from HMIC. This feedback will allow us to further improve and strengthen our services.”