MORE than 14,000 police constables and sergeants are locked in career limbo across England and Wales in what has been described as a \u201cdark period for promotions\u201d.<\/p>\n
In Essex, 209 constables and 44 sergeants have passed Ospre Part I and II but are awaiting promotion, which equates to around eight per cent of all officers in the force.\u00a0Mark Smith, chairman of Essex Police Federation, said: \u201cCareer pathways are not there in Essex any more. It is important for officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Across the country, Freedom of Information request has revealed that at least 10,653 constables and 3,822 sergeants have passed both Ospre Parts I and II, or work-based assessment equivalents, but have not been substantively promoted.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIt is not going to get any easier because of the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review. We have already lost 400 officers and we could see ourselves lose more and more officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis means promotion opportunities will become few and far between. If we are losing resources, there will not be positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Giblin, who sits on the Police Federation\u2019s professional development sub-committee and co-leads on promotion-related matters, said the situation across England and Wales has been getting worse since 2008.<\/p>\n
\u201cOfficers are becoming annoyed, frustrated, demoralised,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have a large pool of good, talented people at the point where they would have expected to progress and it is just not happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIt is a dark period for promotions and it is a consequence of the 20 per cent cuts imposed upon the police service.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police officers awaiting promotion have said they feel \u201cvery, very frustrated\u201d and said the lack of promotions has \u201cleft people feeling despondent\u201d.<\/p>\n
ACPO has acknowledged it is “a very serious issue” and suggested the police service looks at other ways of \u201crewarding and incentivising officers\u201d with a greater emphasis on development and lateral progression.<\/p>\n
Mike Cunningham, ACPO lead on workforce development and chief constable of Staffordshire Police, said: \u201cThere are considerably more staff qualified for promotion than there are opportunities, and this has the potential to adversely impact on morale.\u201d<\/p>\n
The College of Policing has acknowledged the current system of promotion is qualifying more officers than can reasonably be promoted in the current economic climate. It believes the new NPPF, currently being piloted seven forces and due to be rolled out across the country, will go some way to help.<\/p>\n
The overall FOI figures include all forces in England and Wales, including British Transport Police.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MORE than 14,000 police constables and sergeants are locked in career limbo across England and Wales in what has been described as a \u201cdark period for promotions\u201d. In Essex, 209\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":214,"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\/282"}],"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=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}