Taxpayers will not cover police budget gap - mayor

The mayor of South Yorkshire has reassured taxpayers they will not foot the bill to cover a £65m police finances blackhole.

Accounting mistakes were discovered in 2024 after Oliver Coppard took on the responsibilities of the police and crime commissioner within his role as mayor. He launched a review which will be published in February.

South Yorkshire Police has been given permission by the government to use money from its reserves to meet day-to-day expenses following the financial errors.

Coppard said: "No police services have been stopped or scaled back as a result of that financial deficit."

He said the police precept, which is paid as part of council tax, would probably rise by £15 per year for a Band D property.

Speaking on BBC Radio Sheffield, he said: "None of the precept money is going into fixing this accounting problem, it is going into frontline services.

"Petrol prices go up and the police need to use petrol, Microsoft are charging more and the police use that system, we need to pay our police officers more every year, so we all need to pay a little bit more per year for policing."

The accounting error came to light after Coppard took over the role from the previous police and crime commissioner (PCC) Dr Alan Billings.

Coppard said: "This £65m did not go missing, it was spent on frontline policing, but they hadn't accounted for it which meant when we looked at the books going forward, the sums didn't add up right.

"When I took on policing in this job, we figured out quite quickly that the last people hadn't added up the sums.

"I flagged that up and said we'll be upfront and fix it. We've been talking to the government ever since about solving that problem."

Earlier this week, policing minister Sarah Jones MP gave the force permission to use up to £17m from long-term capital reserves, describing it as "a rare and exceptional set of circumstances".

Coppard said: "The problem was going way into the future and we've got that number down dramatically through things that we've done with the government and the way we account for the money.

"We've worked with an accounting body to do a thorough investigation because I want to know exactly what happened and that there is nothing else like that going on anywhere else in the police finances."

He also said he had "argued with the government" over police finances.

"Some of the problems quite honestly are going back to the Hillsborough disaster.

"We are still paying compensation to those families and we owe it to those families but I've told the government I don't think it is just on South Yorkshire Police and residents to pay that money.

"We need more help because we are paying for that, which is costing us money."

South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority said the budget gap had come as a result of a "fundamental error in accounting practices in the office of the former PCC Billings".

Billings said although the PCC was "nominally responsible" for finance, it had been the police force who had carried out the work and he was unaware of any errors.

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