PEOPLE are not signing up to be police officers for a lifelong career anymore \u2013 as figures show more are leaving the service every year.<\/p>\n
Essex Police Federation says recruits will often say they are only planning to join the force for a short three or four-year spell because it can look good on their CV.<\/p>\n
Nationally nearly 2,400 officers voluntarily left the role last year \u2013 the highest figure for five years.<\/p>\n
PFEW leaders want the Government to do more to retain officers who are already in the job, as well as getting new recruits on board.<\/p>\n
Uncertainty over pensions has shifted policing from being a lifelong vocation, according to Essex Police Federation Chair Laura Heggie.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cPeople are leaving in the numbers that we never used to have, but that\u2019s because sadly the reality is people don\u2019t join the police force now for a 30-year career, which is what they used to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve spoken to student officers when they\u2019re joining and have discussed this with them; some of them quite freely say, \u2018I\u2019ve joined because this will look good on my CV. I\u2019m going to give it three or four years\u2019, and then they\u2019re going to move on to do something else.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not recruiting career cops anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople used to join because you knew that come 30 years in the job you would then be able to retire with your lump sum and potentially you\u2019d still be young enough to go and do a second career having fulfilled your full 30 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of the changes in the pension and the working-age that\u2019s now changed. That\u2019s no longer set in stone. In time to come, we\u2019re going to end up with 58, 60-year-old coppers on the front line.\u201d<\/p>\n
There have to be more perceived benefits to stay in the job and to make it worthwhile putting up with the mental and physical toll it can take, Laura believes.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cThere have to be benefits. There\u2019s got to be that incentive, and they\u2019ve got to stay in place because people have got to be able to plan for later in their life.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s partly why we have issues with retention now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PEOPLE are not signing up to be police officers for a lifelong career anymore \u2013 as figures show more are leaving the service every year. Essex Police Federation says recruits\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":146623,"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\/146542"}],"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=146542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146764,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146542\/revisions\/146764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/146623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}