London, Mar 18(ANI): A new report has revealed that British police officers and staff spend 31 percent of their time dealing with criminals and of that, only 13 per cent is spent investigating crime.

According to the Inspectorate of Constabulary’s report, 47 percent of the staff’s time is spent on “aiding the public”, which includes working in the community, policing roads and taking 999 calls.

The report further said that time spent on “supporting functions”, including IT, training, finance and human resources, adds up to 22 percent.

The data also highlighted that taxpayers fork out 13.5 billion dollars every year for Britain’s 43 police forces, with 80 percent of the money spent on staff.

Talking about the figures revealed by the report, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said it makes a mockery of Labour’s pledge to put more police on our streets.

“Labour ministers think that police bureaucracy isn’t a problem and that police officers prefer to stay in the warm instead of policing our streets,” The Daily Express quoted Grayling, as saying. “This report shows how utterly out of touch Labour policy is. We’ll never begin the fight back against crime until we slash the paper work that’s keeping officers off our streets and behind their desks,” he added.

The report further found that out of the 243,000 staff in the UK, 143,800 are full-time officers, 16,500 community support officers and 82,190 civilian support staff.

Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance pressure group, said: “Police forces clearly need to reorganise to put more of their staff on the frontline in the fight against crime.

“Taxpayers don’t want their money to go towards pen-pushers, we want police officers to keep us safe and catch criminals. Whichever party wins the next election, they need to shake up the police to reprioritise their staffing to their key objective of reducing crime,” Elliot added. (ANI)