PRRB ‘Pointless It Not Independent’

THE Police Remuneration Review Body – which helps decide police officer pay rises – is pointless if it is not independent, Hampshire Police Federation has said.

In 2021, the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) withdrew from the Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB), stating that it had no independence, as its recommendations for police pay were not accepted by the Government.

This year PFEW has decided again not to make a submission to the PRRB. It said in a statement: “PFEW strongly feel that the PRRB could have prevented the increasing gap between the degradation of police pay in comparison to the pay of other public sector/protected services/frontline emergency service workers, who are continually offered substantially better pay awards than police officers if the process was, in fact, independent.”

Zoe Wakefield, Chair of Hampshire Police Federation, said: “I think, obviously, we came out of the PRRB under a different Home Secretary. I think the PRRB isn’t going to change anywhere. We’re not going to have a different mechanism for our pay anytime in the new future. There doesn’t seem to be any appetite from the Government to change it.

“I think we need to have conversations with the current Home Secretary and we need to be seeking assurances from her that it will be independent. Depending on how those conversations go, we can then make a decision whether or not to return. But at the moment we can’t really do that without those assurances and it would be pointless if it’s not going to be independent.”

Zoe added: “I hope that our national Police Federation Chair and Secretary are making efforts to have those conversations with the Home Secretary Suella Braverman. Obviously she’s one of our local MPs, so she’s received the same letter that I’ve sent to all the MPs – on the need for a 17% pay rise for officers – so we’ll wait and see whether she replies to my letter or not.”