Apprenticeship starting salary is ‘derisory’ says Federation

The £18,000 starting salary for new police apprenticeships is not enough and is of ‘real concern’ given the basic cost of living in Essex.

Essex Police Federation Chairman Steve Taylor is concerned the ‘derisory’ amount for new police recruits, announced by the Home Office earlier this month, will lead to them eventually leaving the force for higher paid jobs.

“The money being offered is just not enough,” he said, “particularly for us here in Essex which is an affluent part of the country and where the cost of living is so high.

“Now we have the South East Allowance, but it’s not linked to the cost of living unlike London Weighting payments which are.”

However, the force can have issues in ensuring officers get the South East Allowance in their pay as its aimed at helping forces both recruit and retain officers.

Steve said: “I would maintain we have an officer retention issue in Essex, you only have to look at how many officers we lose to the Metropolitan Police for instance, but we have people knocking on the door wanting to be police officers, in fact the issue we have is in processing the numbers.

“So, all the while the Government links the allowance to retention and recruitment it means we are going to struggle to get that payment awarded to our colleagues – we’d like to see it linked to the cost of living instead.”

Steve continued: “It’s not all doom and gloom and there are lots of positives about being a police officer. But equally, the officers we lose have gone through years of training and often have years of frontline experience, so we feel each loss.

“We only have to look at the exodus of firearms officers a couple of months ago and the real difficulties that placed us in.

“When there’s so few of us having to do more with less, when we lose our experienced colleagues, we do feel that more acutely.
The starting salary certainly doesn’t help the situation.

“When I joined 18 years ago my starting salary then was £17,130 or so – two decades later and it’s gone up a couple of hundred pounds?

“It’s disgusting, the stresses, the strains the dangers that officers face have increased and yet the compensation for that hasn’t.”