The number of neighbourhood policing officers in South Yorkshire has been slashed.

Analysis by the Labour party shows that South Yorkshire Police has lost more than 1000 neighbourhood policing officers. That’s a reduction of 86 per cent – from 1,177 in 2018 to 169 in 2019. The number of neighbourhood policing PCSOs fell from 313 in 2015 to 194 in 2019.

Olivia Blake, Labour’s candidate for Sheffield Hallam, said:

“Neighbourhood policing teams are on the frontline of keeping our people and communities safe. They have been decimated by the Tories.

“The damage caused by these broken promises and brutal cuts cannot be reversed and the know-how that thousands of experienced bobbies brought to the job is gone for good – at a time when we’ve never needed it more.

“Warnings from rank and file officers were ignored and the government accused them of scaremongering. Boris Johnson cannot be trusted on policing. He served in a government that promised to protect the police, then voted for brutal real-terms cuts. And as Mayor of London, he broke his promise to ‘recruit thousands of officers’ and in some years of his mayoralty the number of officers actually fell.”