THE low pay on offer to police officers is putting off new recruits to Essex Police, the force\u2019s federation has said.<\/p>\n
Mark Smith, chairman of Essex Police Federation, (pictured) said the force has seen \u201cissues with recruitment and the standard of recruits\u201d.<\/p>\n
Andy Fittes, general secretary of the Police Federation of England and Wales made the same point at an open meeting earlier in the month.<\/p>\n
He said that to get a \u201cflexible, motivated and balanced workforce you need to pay a decent wage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Smith told EssexFedFocus: \u201cThe issue for me is that they have changed the regulations to say that unless you have Special or military experience, you need A levels to join the service. But we are not going to get these people. If they have worked hard to get their A levels or degree, why are they going to want to join up only to get the current wage? It is a big issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the problem was reminiscent of the 1970s, when recruitment was so low the Government had to double the police wage overnight.<\/p>\n
Mr Smith added: \u201cThe Government is saying that there is a queue of people wanting to join up. But I don\u2019t agree. People see the cuts, they see the problems the police are having, the changes to pay and conditions and I do not believe there is this queue of people around the block. They just need to pay a decent wage and then the force will have its pick of applicants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Fittes told the Greater Manchester Police Federation\u2019s annual meeting there was a risk the service was \u201cteetering on the edge of not recruiting the right people into the organisation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Fittes told more than 200 officers at the meeting on the Thursday 13 November, that the national the Fed is working to convince the new Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) that there is a need to pay officers this \u201cdecent\u201d salary.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month Home Secretary Theresa May published the remit for the new PRRB \u2013 with officers set for no more than a 1% pay rise in 2015. However the final decision will not be made until next year.<\/p>\n
Mr Fittes said: \u201cIt is a new way of working. It is a way of joint working, with the chiefs [and] Superintendents\u2019 Association to deliver a joint message on behalf of policing \u2013 which basically say pay officers a decent wage, otherwise you don\u2019t get good police officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a lot more complicated than that and obviously it has to be evidence based argument but basically that is what we are saying to the Pay Review Body\u2026 if we say it jointly on behalf of all of policing it is a stronger message.\u201d<\/p>\n
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THE low pay on offer to police officers is putting off new recruits to Essex Police, the force\u2019s federation has said. Mark Smith, chairman of Essex Police Federation, (pictured) said\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":230,"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\/1533"}],"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=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1581,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions\/1581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}