Police Chief Constables are backing pay rises for officers – but it’s all ‘too little, too late’.
Staffordshire Police Federation says the National Police Chiefs Council should have been ‘screaming from the rooftops’ about officer pay years ago after NPCC leader Francis Habgood only recently acknowledged that officers should be paid more.
CC Habgood said the NPCC recognises that officers had been ‘really challenged financially’ by recent derisory pay awards.
But the response from the top level of policing isn’t enough for Staffordshire Police Federation Chairman Keith Jervis.
“It’s too little, too late in terms of budgeting for the police,” he said.
“The NPCC should have been screaming this from the rooftops years ago when we saw police numbers begin to fall and police budgets begin to fall, and the Government were making claims about sustaining the amount of pay.
“In real terms the amount available for policing has been reduced and reduced and reduced. It’s too little, too late.
“Of course, we would say, ‘Yes, we expect police officers to be paid properly’. They’ve had a 1% pay rise in real terms for a number of years now which means they haven’t kept up with inflation,” he added.
“The real amount of pay that they’ve had in their pockets to spend has come down every year. It’s just not sustainable.”
There has been a lot of positive noise on funding from the Government, Keith added, but not a lot of action.
“Everybody is working at the maximum capacity, every force is. Unless we encourage people by paying them properly then we will lose numbers in policing,” he said.
“We’ve had all the right noises from the new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid. He said right from the beginning he didn’t think there was enough money in policing and he’d like to see extra funding.
“But what we need is to see it in real terms. We need to see a commitment in the next comprehensive spending review to boost police officer pay and also to boost police budgets.
“That’s going to take time to come through. We’ve lost so many officers, we can’t recruit them and build the numbers back up quickly.”
