POLICE officers are being invited to submit their views on plans to hold disciplinary and appeal hearings in public.<\/p>\n
Officers have until Friday 2 January to submit views on proposals – made by former Army officer Major General Clive Chapman in his review of the police complaints system –\u00a0which also include greater protection for whistleblowers and introducing independent legal experts to chair disciplinary hearing panels.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWhistleblowers will not be subject to disciplinary action for taking the necessary steps to report a concern and any reprisals against them will be taken seriously,\u201d recommended Mr Chapman.<\/p>\n
His plans for public disciplinary hearings would apply to higher-level misconduct cases that could lead to dismissal,\u00a0not lower-level misconduct cases.\u00a0Mr Chapman said the change would promote greater consistency and improve transparency and justice.<\/p>\n
Legally-qualified experts would replace the senior officers who currently chair the panels of\u00a0disciplinary hearings, and chief officers in special case hearings. This is in order to \u201cintroduce a greater degree of independence into the way police disciplinary hearings are conducted and to ensure judgements are legally sound”, he said.<\/p>\n
The disciplinary hearing panels for senior officers will also be given the ability to remove or adjust compensation payments due at the termination of a chief officer\u2019s contract of appointment, if they are subject to a disciplinary finding.<\/p>\n
Home Secretary Theresa May has launched a public consultation on the recommendations.\u00a0Mrs May has previously said that the current disciplinary process \u201clacks transparency, is bureaucratic and lacks independence\u201d.<\/p>\n
Steve Evans, Vice Chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said he was \u201cdelighted\u201d that the government is considering plans to put legally trained independent experts in charge of misconduct hearings for the police.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe this will ensure greater impartiality in investigations conducted by both the Independent Police Complaints Commission and professional standard departments,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe this will lead to greater examination of severity assessments and that more officers will be dealt with at the most appropriate level. This was always the essence of the 2008 (2012) Regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officers can respond to the consultation online at\u00a0www.gov.uk<\/a>\u00a0or email their response to:\u00a0policeregsconsultation@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" POLICE officers are being invited to submit their views on plans to hold disciplinary and appeal hearings in public. Officers have until Friday 2 January to submit views on proposals\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1546,"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\/1545"}],"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=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1589,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions\/1589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}