THE police minister and the country\u2019s chief constables have been told to publish a list of actions they will take to tackle plummeting police morale.<\/p>\n
MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee have said morale among many police officers has \u201csunk to its lowest ebb in recent memory\u201d. The Committee said it is \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d by the decline and particularly by statistics that show 95 per cent of officers do not feel they supported by the Government.<\/p>\n
In a report entitled Leadership and Standards in the Police, published on July 1, the Committee said: \u201cWhen major organisational change is underway it is vital to have the support of the workforce. In policing, this is particularly important because morale in the ranks can have a real impact on public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
It added that it was concerned that some chief officers may now be paid ten times more than \u201can ordinary constable on the front line\u201d.<\/p>\n
MPs called on the Chief Constables\u2019 Council \u2013 the senior operational decision-making body for ACPO \u2013 and the minister for policing Damian Green to publish a list of actions they intend to take to address the issue of police morale during the course of this year.<\/p>\n
Since the Winsor reports into police pay and conditions, officers have had their pay frozen and special priority payments and competency related threshold payments abolished \u2013 alongside an increase to their monthly pension contributions. A new pensions scheme is due to be implemented in 2015.<\/p>\n
MPs said they understood the need for changes to pay and pension arrangements for new police recruits due to financial restraints. But they raised concerns about changes to pay and pensions for officers already serving in the police.<\/p>\n
Their report warned that reforms may \u201cundermine future confidence in the system and could be detrimental to the future financial plans of officers and police morale\u201d.<\/p>\n
A Home Office spokesman said the department would respond to the recommendations from the Home Affairs Select Committee \u201cin due course\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cPolice reform is working and crime is falling. Policing will remain a well-paid job with a pension that is among the best available and, as recent force recruitment drives have shown, it is a job people still want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Results from a survey of 14,000 serving officers carried out last year found that 95 per cent did not feel the Government supported the police. Only 0.1 per cent \u2013 15 officers \u2013 thought the Coalition offered the service \u201ca great deal\u201d of support.<\/p>\n
The survey was led by a Professor Jennifer Brown of the London School of Economics and reported on by Lord Stevens, chairman of the Independent Commission on the Future of Policing in England and Wales.<\/p>\n
The committee\u2019s report mentioned an opinion from ACPO president Sir Hugh Orde. He said: \u201cMorale has been at an all-time low every year since I joined [the police service] in 1977\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE police minister and the country\u2019s chief constables have been told to publish a list of actions they will take to tackle plummeting police morale. MPs on the Home Affairs\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":175,"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\/355"}],"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=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":356,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions\/356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}