Hampshire police officers struggling to cope as rest days cancelled amid ‘horrendous’ demand

Zoë Wakefield, chair of Hampshire Police Federation, said it was like nothing she had seen before in her career – with her admitting officers are struggling to cope.

She said: ‘It’s horrendous. I’ve not known anything like it in my service. We can’t cope or keep up with demand. We’ve had a murder over the weekend in Southampton, we’ve got so many officers on scene guards or bed watches, and we haven’t got enough. Backlogs are getting bigger and bigger every day.

‘Officers are having to work overtime in order to keep the backlog under control. Not clear it, just keep it under control. Officers have had their rest days cancelled in August for football matches and music festivals, and for some people that was their only weekend off in the whole of the school summer holidays.’

Officers were feeling stressed, Zoë said: ‘Officers are struggling. They’re tired and overworked. They feel like we’ve got no resources for the most serious stuff. They worry about the victims, they worry about the people involved in those serious cases, because they know they’re not getting the service that they should get from the police.

‘We’re going to make sure that the most senior bosses in the force do understand the reality, that they know what officers are telling us, we’ll pass that onto them so that they are hearing exactly the impact it’s having on officers.’