Health And Safety Needs Much Greater Importance

HEALTH and Safety in policing needs to be given much more importance, Hampshire Police Federation has said.

Chief Constables are being urged to ensure forces comply with the Health and Safety at Work Act to assess the risk to officers and put in place reasonable measures to reduce the danger attached to each role, event or circumstance their officers will be involved in.

Chair Zoe Wakefield said the force needed to put greater emphasis on problems in police buildings, with officers having to work at stations without heating or water.

She explained: “Health and safety needs greater importance than the force currently put on it. Our force are currently restricting how we look at health and safety, they’re separating our the estate side of it from the people side of it.

“It’s not always the first thing that should be thought about. We’ve got health and safety trained reps who could be utilised more by the force.

“Definitely the force needs to look at the state of some of our police stations. We’ve had some issues recently with them.

“We’ve got ongoing issues with the main Southampton central building which are being looked at, but all these things take time, and obviously in that interim officers are having to work there when the heating’s not working properly, or the water supply is not functioning properly.

“And then also around our body armour. We’ve just got new body armour in and there are lots of issues with that which we’re raising with the force.”