THE 2.5% pay rise that police officers saw in their pay packets at the beginning of September still \u201cdoesn\u2019t cut the mustard\u201d and will do little to improve retention, Essex Police Federation has said.<\/p>\n
Chairman Steve Taylor said officers won\u2019t be \u201cbreaking out the bunting\u201d following the increase.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThis is no cause for celebration. Officers know they deserve a pay rise, because inflation has gone up, but it doesn\u2019t make up for the approximately 18% that the service has fallen behind since the start of austerity. So, we\u2019re not doing cartwheels about it, but it is a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n
The service has fallen a long way behind other professions, and Steve said officers are still being lured away by better pay elsewhere \u2013 driving trains in London, for example.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWill the pay rise help retention? Not a jot. In my view, police officers don\u2019t do it for the money, but until you give the police service parity with some of the other common services, then 2.5% doesn\u2019t cut the mustard.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople\u2019s biggest issues is the fairness of it all. The lack of or negative pay rises. They\u2019re not idiots. Financially they understand what it means. Just because we\u2019re a little better worse-off, we\u2019re still worse-off. So 2.5% is a paltry figure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something we\u2019d rather have than not have, but it\u2019s so small that police officers\u2019 view is that it\u2019s not going to make one jot of difference to retention. If people are going and finance is the reason for it, then 2.5% isn\u2019t going to turn their heads and keep them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve also called for better South East allowance payments, after plans for an increase were shelved. He said: \u201cDecisions have been put on the back-burner, tied up in the Police Chief Council\u2019s review on pay and remuneration. So our members are not even got that bit to reflect that extra cost of living we face here in Essex.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE 2.5% pay rise that police officers saw in their pay packets at the beginning of September still \u201cdoesn\u2019t cut the mustard\u201d and will do little to improve retention, Essex\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75539,"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\/75400"}],"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=75400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75742,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75400\/revisions\/75742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}