Steve Beasant

Official Home Office data appear to suggest its moves to cut bureaucracy are working, with police spending a larger proportion of their time on what is called “front line policing”.

However, this definition includes time spent on “incident-related” paperwork, such as preparing files for court cases or filling in stop and search forms.

This has actually increased by a fifth in just five years, new figures show; this means that almost half of officers’ time is now taken up by dealing with paperwork, red tape and other duties.

Opposition MPs accused ministers of using “sleight of hand” to disguise the fact that police officers are increasingly chained to their desks.

According to the Home Office, the proportion of time police spend on the front line has increased from 63.6 per cent in 2003/04 to 64.9 per cent in 2007/08 - the most recent period available.

But incident-related paperwork over the same period has increased from 10.3 per cent of an officer’s time to 12.4 per cent.

It means the amount of time they spend on what many would regard as traditional front line duties - such as patrolling the streets and attending incidents - has actually fallen from 53.3 per cent to just 52.5 per cent.

That also means officers now spend almost half of their time carrying out some form of paperwork and other duties away from the front line.

It comes despite a series of initiatives in recent years by ministers and chief constables to slash the burden of red tape and paperwork to free up officers’ time.

In 2002, Sir David O’Dowd, the former chief inspector of constabulary, published 52 proposals for change after chairing a police bureaucracy taskforce.

In 2007 and 2008, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, then chief inspector of constabulary, undertook a major review of policing and made a series of recommendations to cut paperwork which were fed in to a policing green paper published by the Home Office last year.

The disclosure that police are spending even more time on paperwork comes at a time when many people want more officers on the streets as they fear a recession crime wave.

Official figures in April showed burglaries, theft and fraud offences are all on the rise as the economy suffers its downturn.

Some forms of violent crime are also increasing. It emerged yesterday that serious assaults involving knives have increased by 6 per cent in the past year. The equivalent of 72 people a day are stabbed or robbed at knifepoint after police recorded 26,000 serious knife attacks in the year up to March.

Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said: “It is disappointing that the Government seem intent on pulling the wool over the public’s eyes where statistics are concerned.

“Whilst these figures infer a slight rise in front line policing they also indicate a more significant rise in post incident paperwork. Front line policing is already stretched to capacity with form filling adding a further time consuming strain.

“The Government needs to recognise that bridges need to be rebuilt, not only with the public, but with the police. The public want a visible policing presence.”

  Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Huhne added: “It’s little more than sleight of hand to suggest that officers are spending more time on front line duties when they’re just bogged down in more and more paperwork.

  “There have been countless reviews on police red tape in recent years but these figures suggest the problem is getting worse not better.

  “If we are to combat a credit crunch crime wave, we need more police spending more time on real front line duties like catching more criminals.”