PROPOSALS from Chief Officers and the Home Office to scrap a number of police officer Bank Holidays and the overnight allowance are hugely damaging to police morale.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the view of Mark Smith (pictured), Chairman of Essex Police Federation. He said: \u201cThey speak with forked tongues – one day they\u2019re saying what a brilliant job police officers do\u2026 and the next day they\u2019re attacking their terms and conditions of service.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI\u2019m disappointed that they want to continue to attack police officers, those police officers that they keep saying are wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n
In their submissions to the Police Pay Review Body (PRRB), as well as calling for a 1% pay rise, chief officers in England and Wales have recommended scrapping the away from home allowance and all Bank Holidays \u2013 apart from Christmas Day and New Year\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n
Police officers are currently paid at double time for working Bank Holidays and from \u00a350 to \u00a380 for working away from home, depending on conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe areas that we\u2019re talking about have all been through reform and looked at by Winsor in his pay reviews,\u201d said Mr Smith \u201cWhy are we looking at it again? Why do they continue to erode Police Regulations, when we have no comeback, no redress over what they\u2019re doing to us?<\/p>\n
\u201cPolice officers are treated and paid for and guided by the Police Regulations and the Government shouldn\u2019t\u2019 be able to change those on a whim – especially when they\u2019ve only just been looked at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Smith compared the position of chiefs on Bank Holidays and the overnight allowance to their recent stance on all wanting to introduce compulsory severance \u2013 which they backed away from.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIt\u2019s like compulsory severance. The Chiefs\u2019 council we\u2019re talking about standing together, even if a certain Chief didn\u2019t agree with it, they wanted to stand together because another one might need to use it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be nice if Chief Officers would actually stand up, look after their own within the force that they work for, and actually look after their own officers. I wouldn\u2019t mind betting there are individuals that don\u2019t agree with taking away Bank Holidays.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Smith also supported the national Federation in their request for a 2.8% police officer pay rise.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we should be asking for more, we deserve more,\u201d added Mr Smith. \u201cPay has been going up in the private sector, but we\u2019re behind them\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PROPOSALS from Chief Officers and the Home Office to scrap a number of police officer Bank Holidays and the overnight allowance are hugely damaging to police morale. That\u2019s the view\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1051,"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\/2605"}],"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=2605"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2633,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2605\/revisions\/2633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}