FIGURES showing how many officers could be funded if forces cut overtime doesn\u2019t mean an instant supply of extra officers on the frontline, says Essex Police Federation.<\/p>\n
Nationally forces spent \u00a31.7 billion on overtime pay in the last five years while the amount paid out by the Essex force could have paid for an extra 200 officers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But spending on new recruits instead of overtime wouldn\u2019t instantly mean any extra officers would be out on the beat, says Essex Police Federation Chairman Steve Taylor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes time to get recruits up to the standards required and time to ensure they can perform the duties they need to,\u201d Steve said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could equate the amount of money spent on overtime, you could equate that to X number of officers, and I think in Essex it\u2019s 200 or so.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow I do see that point, and maybe it\u2019s useful for illustrative purposes. But practically speaking it takes time to get a recruit up to a standard of being able to perform the duties of the role\u201d<\/p>\n
For some colleagues, overtime can provide a much welcome and much needed boost to their monthly salaries and in many departments, it can be readily available, he added.<\/p>\n
However, when overtime must be done to just get the job done then it can have a negative impact on officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the Firearms teams, for example, there is lots of overtime available as there is with some of the ore proactive policing units, road safety partnerships etc.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor some officers, overtime is a real benefit and they use it correctly, but for others it couldn\u2019t be more different.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn those situations, the force may say that officers need to stay on shift, that there\u2019s a job to be done and nobody else to do it, so they have to stay on and do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s for those officers where it results in them being pressed \u2013 they are not volunteers and overtime can be a destructive force, there are winners and losers.<\/p>\n
Some parts of the force also could simply not operate without overtime, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the other side of the coin, the extremes where the last thing officers want to do is to be forced to stay on for more hours to sort something when there\u2019s no one else to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FIGURES showing how many officers could be funded if forces cut overtime doesn\u2019t mean an instant supply of extra officers on the frontline, says Essex Police Federation. Nationally forces spent\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3350,"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\/4645"}],"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=4645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4646,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4645\/revisions\/4646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}