IN the current climate, with all that is going on in Rotherham and questions being raised about the safeguarding of vulnerable people, the spotlight is quite rightly being focused on how the authorities deal with such incidents.

So it will not be welcomed at West Yorkshire police headquarters that a new report into how certain reports to the police were followed up has pointed out significant problems.

Chief among these is that some incidents were not formally classed as crimes – especially worrying in the cases of possible sexual offences committed on vulnerable adults and children.

If, as the report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary suggests, a large number of reported incidents were not logged as crimes because it would have created too much work, then that is simply not acceptable and an inquiry into this must be launched at the highest possible level.

What the report claims is that too many incidents were dealt with scant regard for the real people who should matter in these situations – the victims of crime.

Out of the sample 260 records looked at by the HMIC, only 150 had been officially classed as crimes when it should have been 220.

We all understand that the thin blue line is stretched ever more each year due to budget cuts and lack of resources, but if an increased administration workload means that our police are not treating with utmost seriousness and diligence every crime reported to them, then a major overhaul of how law enforcement works in West Yorkshire is required.