GOVERNMENT cuts \u2013 and workload pressure because of falling officer numbers – have been blamed for a rise in police officer sickness rates in Essex.<\/p>\n
Mark Smith, chairman of Essex Police Federation was responding to reports that the number of sick days taken by Essex Police officers has risen by 50% over the past five years.\u00a0He said: \u201cI think the baseline of why they are going up is Government cuts.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Essex Police constable Stephen Kavanagh, the force needs to save in the region of \u00a336 million over the next three financial years.<\/p>\n
Mr Smith said: \u201cThe cuts will continue, there will be fewer frontline officers, pressure will continue to pile onto officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI know it is said over and over again but government cuts are the foundation for many problems and the sickness comes on the back of some of the things that have already been created.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor instance; workload pressure because of falling officer numbers; pressure of not being able to get annual leave because officers are being used in other officers leaving fewer officers behind, sickness levels because when someone does become sick it maybe isn\u2019t being addressed early on – there\u2019s been a lack of investment in occupational health and welfare.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been a number of years where chief constables haven\u2019t seen the need because the NHS are there but we know that the NHS are at breaking point as well and getting those appointments is very difficult as well. So there has been a lack of investment all round in the greatest asset that we\u2019ve got – which is police officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to figures obtained by the BBC using the Freedom of Information Acts, on average, officers took nearly 12.75 days off sick during the year to April, up from 8.28 days per officer in 2008.<\/p>\n
The figures show that the 3,236 officers employed by the force in 2013-14 took a total of 41,252 days’ sick leave, up from a total of 28,864 in 2008-09.<\/p>\n
So what more can Essex Police Federation do to help sick officers? Mr Smith added: \u201cThe main thing we can do is keep bringing these points up to the force – when officers are struggling, when they are not being looked after, to keep going back to the force, not being the thorn in their side but their conscience.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo remind them that they owe it to these officers. Of course, the quicker you can get them back to work, it assists the officers, it assists the other officers that they work with – a lot of officers don\u2019t want to be sitting around at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of officers you can\u2019t get back quickly; they\u2019ve had an operation and they need the recovery time. But there are some with stress and I know the figures show that stress-related illness has gone up, if that can be addressed early, maybe we can get people back quicker. Before it evolves into depression because before you know it they\u2019ve seen their doctor, they\u2019re on tablets and they\u2019re off for six months.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GOVERNMENT cuts \u2013 and workload pressure because of falling officer numbers – have been blamed for a rise in police officer sickness rates in Essex. Mark Smith, chairman of Essex\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1099"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1101,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions\/1101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}