Federation work secures increase for officers in South East Allowance

After years of pressure from Hampshire Police Federation, Hampshire Police officers will receive the maximum South East Allowance of £2,000 a year.

 

The increased payments will start for colleagues in January 2024.

 

Hampshire Police Federation Chair Zoë Wakefield said she was pleased that Police and Crime Commissioner Donna Jones had agreed to the rise, especially since nearly all the other forces in the region already received the maximum allowance.

 

Zoë said: “It’s been a huge amount of work to achieve this for our members. We started lobbying the previous PCC about the South East Allowance. Our current PCC, Donna Jones, has been in post for two and a half years and for that whole time, every time we’ve met with her we’ve discussed it, and she’s always been willing to listen.

 

“In August last year it went up to £1,800, which the PCC said was all the force could afford at the time. We’ve kept negotiating with her since then, because all bar one of the other forces in our region are at the maximum, so we’ve been really pushing to get ours to the maximum as well.

 

“We were also having discussions with the Chief Constable Scott Chilton, who was really keen to help us get to this point.

 

“This is a really good thing, because officers are so poorly paid and anything extra that they can get is a bonus. It’s not going to be a huge amount in their pay packet each month, but it’s a little bit extra.

 

“It also shows that the PCC understands how difficult policing is, realises how hard everybody’s working, and that they deserve to be paid the maximum that they can be paid.”