5,000 rest days owed as ‘harder for officers to take time off’

ESSEX Police owes its officers more than 5,000 days in cancelled rest days.

Mark Smith, Chairman of Essex Police Federation, said with police officer shrinking “it’s getting hard for officers to take time off, or even annual leave.” He added: “So these 5,074 days that are owed to officers, I’m concerned whether or not officers will ever actually be able to take them”.

Police forces in England and Wales owe their officers 1,117 years of rest days.

The service currently owes constables, sergeants, inspectors and chief inspectors 407,698 rest days that have been cancelled by their force.

And the staggering figure – revealed by a Freedom of Information Act Request – will in fact be much, much higher as 11 forces in England and Wales, including Greater Manchester Police, did not reply.

Mr Smith (pictured) is also concerned about the impact it will have on policing and the service the public gets. He said: “It’s no different to anyone else who works. If every weekend you were due to be off was taken away from you and you just constantly worked, you can only so long you can go on.

“And in a physically demanding, mentally demanding job, the time you can carry on is cut back even further.

“The actual staff, the police officers, are the biggest asset that Essex Police have, they’re the main resource. If you didn’t have the police officers you wouldn’t have policing so if officers are going off sick and being run into the ground, the knock-on effect is that policing will be affected.”

Mr Smith says the Federation has been working with Essex Police to rectify the situation and is confident that the 5,000 number will not increase any further.

He said the current situation is not sustainable, adding: “What forces are trying to do is carrying on policing in the same way as when we had 3,600 police officers in Essex, we now have 2,900.

“It can’t happen, and they’re only coping by cancelling rest days. But that’s a false economy because if you keep cancelling rest days more and more officers are going to go off sick, and you’re going to have fewer and fewer resources available to you.”

An Essex Police spokesman said: “The nature of modern policing means that officers and members of staff often have to work days when they would otherwise be off. This can be for court, operational commitments and sometimes to enable personal flexibility to manage demanding workloads.”