Risk Of Officers Getting Better-Paid Jobs

POLICE officers will start leaving the service to get better-paid jobs as a result of poor pay and conditions, the Chair of Hampshire Police Federation has warned.

The Government announced that all police officers would receive a £1,900 pay rise in September, which is 7% for new recruits but just 2% for Chief Inspectors, and way below the inflation rate of 9.4%.

Hampshire Police Federation Chair Zoë Wakefield said: “It’s good that those officers who are younger in service, who are on the lowest pay, are getting the most. But we’re not rewarding experience and rank, and I think the Government needs to be careful, because we’re going to lose a lot of experienced officers who’ve had far too many pay cuts, and this is effectively another one.

“They don’t feel appreciated, they don’t feel valued, and they’re going to leave and get jobs in the private sector. We’ve just had one officer leave, she’s got about 18 years’ service and she’s found a job four days a week earning more money than she was as a police officer working five days a week.

“I think the Government is worried about the uplift, getting the numbers in. So it’s thought: ‘Let’s increase the lower pay scale so it’s more attractive to people joining. But we don’t like the police enough to give it to them across the board, so this is how we’ll get around it’. They’ve given a lump sum that is very divisive.”

Zoë said this wasn’t the end of the police pay campaign, and that the national Federation had much more work to do.

She said: “It’s not over at all. We can’t just sit and do nothing – and it’s got to be more than a strongly worded letter. We know that there are lots of politicians and celebrities who do support the police. We need to get those people that support us to really join us on this campaign.”