FRONTLINE police officers have raised fears compulsory severance could be used as a \u201cthreatening tool\u201d by police managers and forces \u2013 jeopardising the independence of constables.<\/p>\n
The Staff and Official sides of the Police Negotiating Board (PNB) are currently wrangling over the redundancy proposal. The Board will share its findings and deliberations with the Home Secretary Theresa May on Wednesday 24 July.<\/p>\n
If they fail to reach an agreement by this date, the issue will be referred to the Police Arbitration Tribunal.<\/p>\n
The controversial recommendation, made by Tom Winsor in his review of police pay and conditions, has caused fear and concern among officers across the country.<\/p>\n
One PC from West Midlands Police, who did not wish to be named, said: \u201cI worry that it could be used as a threatening tool by the force. It would make me hesitate to make a name for myself by pulling up supervisors on their behaviour in case I risked putting myself at the forefront of those being made redundant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another PC from Hampshire Police said compulsory redundancy would \u201cchange policing irreparably\u201d. He believes it will depend on whether you get on with your line manager as to whether you keep your job or not. \u201cPersonality clashes will in effect mean the sack, as they will decide where the axe falls,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Neil Bowles, chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation, said compulsory severance \u201cbrings in the prospect of unfair pressure being put on individual officers to go and do something that maybe they wouldn\u2019t do under the threat \u2018if you don\u2019t do it I will sack you\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n
Compulsory redundancy has been described by the chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales as an \u201cabsolute game changer that will change the face of policing forever\u201d. Steve Williams said: \u201cIt has not been thought through properly. It is a step too far and there really is no case for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Graham Cassidy, national secretary for the Superintendents\u2019 Association of England & Wales, said: \u201cIt would undermine the Office of Constable if it were to be introduced but also \u2013 on a practical note \u2013 we see no business case or need for severance to come in, certainly for superintendents.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Home Office has insisted that the ability to make officers redundant would \u201cmerely provide chief constables and PCCs the opportunity to manage their workforce more effectively\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a statement, it said: \u201cIn redundancy scenarios, selection criteria must be objective, fair and consistent. Using redundancy to target an individual arbitrarily, in response to them appropriately challenging unlawful or inappropriate behaviour or actions of senior colleagues, would be irrational and unlawful behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FRONTLINE police officers have raised fears compulsory severance could be used as a \u201cthreatening tool\u201d by police managers and forces \u2013 jeopardising the independence of constables. The Staff and Official\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":300,"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\/341"}],"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=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":357,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions\/357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}