North Yorkshire Police Prepare For First Weekend Of New Covid-19 Rules

Police in Scarborough Borough are bracing themselves for a difficult first weekend of the new curfew rules.

On Thursday the new restrictions came into effect meaning pubs, bars and restaurants have to close at 10pm.

Chief Inspector Rob Bowles, Chair of the North Yorkshire Police Federation, said:

"We have the exact same problems in policing with the new Covid restictions as we have throughout the entire Covid pandemic really.

"I think we're struggling with additional demand. In general, I think we've had a 25% increase in calls over the course of the last two years, as well as a national increase in crime of 13%.

"We are already quite thinly stretched and additional Covid restrictions and the enforcement of that are going to present additional problems with that kind of background of additional demand.

"We obviously priortise calls that come into the control room in accordance with the threat, harm and risk associated with each those individual calls.

"So I'm not concerned anybody's wellbeing is going to adversly affected by the additional demand but it does place additional demand and burden on police officers.

"The British policing model has always been about policing by consent. There's always an attempt to engage, explain, encourage before any enforcement action would ever be taken.

"We're also to a certain extent reliant upon the goodwill of the British public and the desire to do the right thing."