Specialist units

Maintaining standards and security is an important role within any organisation.

A priority for South Yorkshire Police is to raise performance and the following units make sure this is achieved without sacrificing our organisational standards.

Diversity Unit

The Diversity Unit is responsible for proactively developing, monitoring and raising awareness of diversity issues around age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion and belief, and sexual orientation. 

The unit develops and monitors the South Yorkshire Police Diversity Strategy, which includes managing:

  1. the Single Equality Scheme
  2. the Fairness at Work procedure
  3. the First Contact Advisor Scheme
  4. the Positive Action Mentor Scheme

The unit also audits the quality of Diversity Impact Assessments, ensuring that they are carried out for all policies and procedural instructions.

Information Compliance Unit

The ICU is all about information security, conducting a variety of monitoring activities to ensure the lawful, secure and efficient management of information held by the Force e.g. the way it is gathered, processed, transmitted, communicated, stored, disclosed and disposed of.

The unit acts as a source of information and guidance on all of the matters mentioned above and ensures compliance with associated legislation such as the Data Protection Act 1998.

Force Vetting Unit

This unit basically says who can and can’t have regular or unsupervised access to police premises, information or assets. 

The service provided by the FVU has to be robust, effective and fair but isn’t just for police officers and staff – it also includes contractors and partnership workers such as Arrest Referral Workers, Interpreters and City Centre Ambassadors.

Freedom of Information Unit

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 came fully into force on 1 January 2005 and the FOI unit processes all requests for information from members of the public.

Please visit the Requesting Information section to find out more about making a request for information from South Yorkshire Police.

Intelligence Development Unit

This unit provides the facility for staff to report suspicions (confidentially if desired) about ‘serious wrongdoing’ that is likely to affect the integrity of South Yorkshire Police. The unit will then analyse and develop such information before making any relevant recommendations to address the issues raised.