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Police and carers may be struggling with excess paperwork

Mountains of paperwork to fill in could be stopping people from doing their jobs.

Police and care providers are becoming increasingly unable to do their jobs properly because of bureaucracy and excess paperwork, two separate surveys have suggested.

HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) has carried out a review of recent government cutbacks and ways in which they are impacting police forces in England and Wales, the Daily Mail reports.

It discovered that in some parts of the UK, traditional officers who would once patrol the streets have been almost entirely replaced by Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs).

Indeed, it is expected the the number of these civilian volunteers will increase by 60 per cent by 2015 while the ranks of ‘beat bobbies’ are slowly depleted.

Meanwhile, trained officers are at their stations dealing with paperwork so they do not have the time to join them.

HMIC’s Zoe Billingham said she is worried that this may eventually cause the public to lose trust in the police.

"We have spoken to hundreds of police officers of many ranks who say their work has changed. We are very concerned about some of these changes," she added.

The warning comes in spite of recent comments from prime minister David Cameron stating that the government is making progress in cutting bureaucracy in order to allow the police to do a better job.

It is not just law enforcement where this issue is having an impact though. A separate study by Community Care on personalisation found that professionals including home help providers are critical of the procedures they must follow when it comes to assessments and resource allocation systems.

Sometimes, this results in lengthy forms needing to be filled in and even duplicates having to be created, meaning that 59 per cent do not have the time they would like to spend with service users.

To get around this, it may be that organisations including publicly-owned service providers need to make more of digitisation. For example, document scanning solutions could put paperwork on to mobile devices that staff could carry around. This would make it much easier to share multiple copies of forms or letters and free up time for staff.

If you’re keen to find out more about this for your organisation, just give Dajon Data Management a call.