Services relying on the Police to pick up the pieces is leaving officers with excessive workloads

24 March 2022

Too many services rely on the Police to pick up the pieces, leaving Officers with excessive workloads, Neil Mennie, Kent Police Federation Chair has said.

He was speaking after Andy Cooke, the new head of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services, told MPs that up to 40 per cent of Officers’ time is taken up on mental health calls.

Neil said: “I, along with many others, have been saying for some time that officer workload is far too high.

“I know there will be many colleagues addressing their ‘crime pots’ in a number of departments and will feel defeated looking at the numbers before they have even started. Despite the best efforts to manage expectations and reduce the number of investigations and calls being allocated by our excellent supporting staff it remains a significant demand.”

Neil criticised a local secure establishment which calls the Police on a regular basis to find missing residents, “without making even the most basic and practical efforts themselves”.

He added: “This is a scenario sadly too many will recognise which is sometimes coupled with what I will politely describe as “embellishments” to ensure our attendance.

“It is singularly unhelpful to hear that ‘we haven’t got the staff’ from those establishments in a way that suggests that we do. This can take many hours of enquiries and work away from other priorities. There will be times when it is appropriate to attend but we can’t do everything.

“We must have a serious look at what we shouldn’t be doing.”

Mr Cooke told the Home Affairs Select Committee yesterday: “An awful lot of Police Officers' time is taken up looking for children missing from home and absent from care.

“If that's what the public and Parliament want Policing to do, that's fine. But you must bear in mind while they're doing that, they're not doing other things that they should be doing, like detecting crime.

“With the wide scope that Policing has, in my view there needs to be a decision made in relation to what we want from our police service moving forward, and whether other agencies need to step into some parts of that sphere.”