SEEING colleagues in neighbouring counties receive an increase in allowance payments while they don\u2019t is a real \u2018kick in the teeth\u2019 for Essex police officers, Essex Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Officers in Kent have just seen their South East allowance payments, in place to help them pay for the higher cost of living in the region, upped by \u00a3500 a year to \u00a32,500.<\/p>\n
Met officers could be in line for another \u00a31,000 taking their allowance to \u00a35,000. Essex officers meanwhile get just \u00a32,000 a year.<\/p>\n
Laura Heggie, Essex Police Federation Chair said it\u2019d been a \u2018bone of contention\u2019 for a while now and that she plans to take up the matter with the Chief Constable who has the power to increase the fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe power for the rise in the South East allowance lays purely in the hands of the Chief Constable, and I\u2019ve had this conversation with the chief several times now, and we will continue to have that conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe knows it\u2019s coming, and the officers in Essex deserve for it to be increased,\u201d Laura said.<\/p>\n
\u201cColleagues in other forces getting a rise is another kick in the teeth. Seeing the Met and Kent get that increase and not us is hard for officers to accept.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know from the conversations that I\u2019ve had with the Chief that he says that if the money were there, he would gladly pay it, but that doesn\u2019t help the officers month to month. We are still losing officers \u2013 it\u2019s a real bone of contention.\u201d Laura added.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s particularly galling when officers from Essex work with their county colleagues on jobs and campaigns.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s compounded by the fact that Detective Inspectors and Detective Sergeants could be working on a joint campaign, doing the same role, but getting paid different amounts, Laura said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEssex has recognised that we\u2019ve got an issue with recruitment and retention of Detective Constables, and as a result of that, again in line with Kent, they\u2019ve awarded what is at the moment a one-off payment to all Detective Constables of \u00a31,200 for the year,\u201d Laura said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s great, but that hasn\u2019t been given to Detective Sergeants or Detective Inspectors, so they\u2019re left feeling devalued.<\/p>\n
\u201cKent has paid Detective Sergeants this bonus money as well as their staff investigators which hasn\u2019t happened in Essex. We\u2019ve got a lot of officers, especially within SCD, from Essex and Kent who work in the same office.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you could have a Kent Detective Sergeant sitting next to an Essex Detective Sergeant and the Kent colleague is taking home an extra \u00a31,700 a year with the South East allowance and the detective payments than their colleague for doing the same job.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt causes resentment, and we\u2019re dealing with the complaints it has raised,\u201d Laura said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe put it to the Chief and the Chief Officer team, and it has been acknowledged because I thought it was important that the Chief officer team understood how they\u2019d left officers feeling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Chief has said that there\u2019s nothing he could do in relation to the payment for other than Detective Constables as the problem with recruitment and retention isn\u2019t there in other ranks, but they were going to be putting out some communications to the Detective Sergeants, in particular, to ensure that the message was passed on about how much the Chief values them.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that still makes it hard for the officers to swallow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEEING colleagues in neighbouring counties receive an increase in allowance payments while they don\u2019t is a real \u2018kick in the teeth\u2019 for Essex police officers, Essex Police Federation has said.\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\/139468"}],"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=139468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139829,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139468\/revisions\/139829"}],"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=139468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}