OFFICERS who were due to sit their Sergeant\u2019s exams in March won\u2019t miss out on promotion opportunities, Essex Police Federation has confirmed.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
The exams were pulled at the very last minute in the spring due to COVID-19 leaving candidates hanging as to when they might be rescheduled and how that might affect their career paths.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
The exams will now take place online in November, meaning officers can carry on working towards them.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
While it\u2019s been a tricky time for officers who have been working so hard to progress, reassurances are in place that they can still be part of the recruitment talent pool for Sergeant\u2019s vacancies, Essex Federation Chair Laura Heggie said.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough because no one could have predicted COVID-19,\u201d she said<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough I would say it was poorly done as the exams were cancelled right before the exam. People put months and months of preparation work and time into studying for the exam, in their own time.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cTo then cancel them, it was about 6pm the night before, and the exam was supposed to be 9.30 the following morning I think was poor.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cI think they could have predicted that at least the weekend before to have started putting that message out.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cSo officers have had to continue to try and maintain their studying where there\u2019s no incentive there or motivation to try and keep that going.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t know when the exams were going to take place, although we now know that will be online in November.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
That means there should still be some vacancies for them to apply for, Laura said.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cWe got some succession planning meetings that are coming up soon.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a pool of Sergeants waiting to be promoted, because generally by now they would have had the results of the Sergeant\u2019s exam in March, and that pool had been a lot larger.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cI know that with the current pool because they are having to recruit because it\u2019s not right to have people in there are temporary all the time, especially when you\u2019ve got people sitting there with the exam, waiting to go, that are qualified to do the role when the vacancies are there, so that those places will be advertised soon.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had assurances from the force that the pool is such that there will still be further vacancies to be filled after the postponed exam in November.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n
\u201cThat is reassuring for our colleagues that didn\u2019t get to take it in March. They\u2019re not going to miss out on that promotion opportunity which hopefully will still be in place later in the year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OFFICERS who were due to sit their Sergeant\u2019s exams in March won\u2019t miss out on promotion opportunities, Essex Police Federation has confirmed. The exams were pulled at the very last\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":291,"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\/134817"}],"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=134817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134978,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134817\/revisions\/134978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}