THE Government can show it is taking seriously the effect of cuts on policing with actions rather than empty words, Essex Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Police Minister Nick Hurd told the Superintendents\u2019 Association conference this month that the Government is listening to concerns from the police service about the effect of cuts.\u00a0But Chairman Steve Taylor said he is not convinced that Mr Hurd\u2019s sentiment will be backed up by action.<\/p>\n
<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a difference between listening and hearing,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause whilst it\u2019s all well and good getting a finger on the pulse and saying you are listening, you\u2019re not doing anything about it.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not showing us the value in how you pay us, you\u2019re not showing us the value in how you finance the number of officer that we have to face demand, and you\u2019re not showing us any value in a meaningful conversation around what it is and what it isn\u2019t the police are going to be expected to do.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, Mr Hurd\u2019s comments are just cheap political comments which, like the pay award, have no substance behind them to back them up.\u201d<\/p>\n Chief Officers are now starting to highlight the consequences of cuts to police budgets, with NPCC Chair Sara Thornton saying that \u201cresources have got to be part of the conversation\u201d with the Government. There are now 123,142 police officers in England and Wales \u2013 20,592 fewer than in 2010.Essex Police now has 2,819 officers \u2013 down 787 since 2010.<\/p>\n Steve added: \u201cWe have consistently been trying to highlight the consequences that cuts have, and it\u2019s taken this long for there to start to be national traction amongst the Chiefs. It\u2019s quite simple isn\u2019t it? There are too few of us, trying to do too much.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the weak link in that chain at the moment are the individuals, the officers, our members. They\u2019re the ones that are falling over with stress, psychological related instances, which I have no doubt are partially connected to the level of demand that they are trying to deal with in their day to day.<\/p>\n \u201cSo whilst it\u2019s encouraging that Chief Officers are starting to have those conversations, we\u2019ve heard this before from Chiefs. And if you\u2019re not going to reduce the demand, if you\u2019re not going to restrict what we expect our officers to be dealing with, then we need more officers to meet that demand. It\u2019s simple. We\u2019ve cut too deep, and we\u2019re struggling.<\/p>\n \u201cSo for Chief Officers up and down the country to be coming to this realisation, to be coming out and speaking about it in public, we have to welcome.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we have to resist the temptation to say, \u2018we told you so\u2019, because that\u2019s been our mantra for years now, since austerity first started to bite. Why has it taken them so long to catch up with what the rest of us have found for some time?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THE Government can show it is taking seriously the effect of cuts on policing with actions rather than empty words, Essex Police Federation has said. Police Minister Nick Hurd told\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3764,"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\/3763"}],"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=3763"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3767,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3763\/revisions\/3767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}