Federation working with force on police officer leave

ENABLING officers to get time off – with demand on the force growing and officer numbers falling – has been labelled a priority by Essex Police Federation.

Mark Smith, Federation Chairman, said he was “working with the force, trying to get the amount of hours owed to officers down.”

He said Essex Police officers are currently owed 271,633 hours of time off.

And Mr Smith added that falling officers numbers are affecting the time off remaining officers can take.

In 2010, there were 3,606 police officers in Essex. There are now 3,069. That’s 537 fewer.

Mr Smith said: “By the end of 2016 we’ll be down to just under 3,000 so that will be 600 police officers gone. For 2019/20, we are predicted, if the cuts are what we think they will be, and don’t get any worse, we’ll be at about 2,300 officers.

“And the knock on to that is the fewer officers there are the harder it is to get time off. The fewer officers there are it’s harder to get annual leave. There’s no backup. Demand is exceeding the resources we have. The knock on affect is to sickness and to morale.

“Sickness is going up, outstanding annual leave and time owed to officers is still sat there with officers needing the time off, and that’s a priority for us at the moment.

“We’re working with the force, trying to get the amount of hours owed to officers down. And although there are a number of different ideas and ways of getting it down, my priority is to allow them to actually have some time off.”

Mr Smith added: “My concern there is that officers aren’t being allowed to take their annual leave at the moment because we’re looking at a new shift pattern and they’re being told ‘You can’t put in for any leave until September’.

“Once we go on to the shift pattern there’s going to be a bit of a free for all, where everybody’s trying to book their leave and of course not everybody’s going to be able to take it, because you can’t all take it at the same time.

“It’s been very difficult for officers to get annual leave in the holiday. We’ve had situations where they’re told ‘Yeah you can have those two weeks, but you need you to come in on the weekend in the middle’.

“So it’s very, very difficult. Plus officers are being told that they’re working rest days quite regular. So, the vicious circle is that this will knock on to sickness, morale and then the more that go off the less there are on shift so the harder it is again to get any more time off. It’s a vicious circle.”