UK's `Bobbies' waste their day tackling paperwork

London, Aug.7 (ANI): The United Kingdom's police force, popularly known as "Bobbies", waste almost half of their working days tackling paperwork instead of crime.

According to The Sun, the police officers spend almost four hours in every eight-hour shift filling in forms rather than working on their respective beats.

Officers in Cleveland are the biggest pen pushers with 44 per cent of their time spent away from frontline duties. The national average is 36 per cent.

Alarmingly, the Home Office figures only relate to time spent doing "incident-related paperwork" and ignore other non-frontline duties.

Court and custody work, operational planning, crime prevention and call handling will all further restrict time on the beat.

The figures were revealed in a Parliamentary question to Tony McNulty, the Home Office Minister for Policing. The statistics cover all 43 forces across England and Wales on a year-on-year basis since records began in 2003/04.

West Yorkshire Police was the least affected by paperwork. Its officers police the front line 76 per cent of the day. (ANI)