“The new Government must focus on pay, conditions and adult and child social care”

THE new Government must deliver more resources for policing, enhance police pay and conditions and improve adult and child social care, Essex Police Federation has urged.

And it wants whichever party is in power after the General Election to follow through on promises made to boost police officer numbers.

Sorting out the length of time it takes the IOPC to resolve cases should also be high on the to-do list of whoever is Home Secretary, said Essex Federation Chairman Steve Taylor.

“We started the General Election campaign with promises of better resources so we can return to some of the numbers that the police force had before austerity. I think it’s really important that whatever Government lands they start to follow through on that,” he said.

“We also saw the Home Affairs Select Committee start to take more of an interest with the announcement of an inquiry into the IOPC. I think that’s crucial for officers to have confidence in the body that’s meant to investigate them.

“The level of scrutiny that they’re held to, in my view, isn’t sufficient because they fail in a number of areas and there’s no one to hold them to account. That should be something any Home Secretary should be doing, for all our sakes.

“I’d like to see a general improvement in the social care of adults and children in society. As the force of last resort, as the emergency service of last resort, we see ourselves increasingly stretched to breaking point by calls for service in areas that traditionally would have been dealt with by other public services such as mental health,” Steve added.

More must be done to protect and enhance officers’ pay and conditions too, Steve believes.

“I would tell the Home Secretary whoever that will be to plan to grow officer numbers and [look at] the pay and conditions of officers. It’s still front and centre of what we’re [the Federation] is here for and what we’re interested in.

“I’d also say standardise the way you’re going to fund specials joining the Federation. Don’t leave it to local arrangements because they will vary vastly across the country and there’ll be winners and losers.”