POOR starting salaries for police officer roles could be preventing the best candidates coming forward, according to Essex Police Federation.<\/p>\n
The National Police Chiefs Council has said the starting salary for new officers, set between\u00a0\u00a319,971 and \u00a323,124 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland needs to be addressed because it\u2019s a barrier to recruitment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe force tells me\u00a0they\u2019re not short of candidates coming forward to take on new positions. Perhaps that will be used as evidence for the salary not being an issue, but I dispute that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need around ten recruits for every one that we get through the process, and we are shooting ourselves in the foot unnecessarily by having such a woefully low starting salary.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just not fit for purpose – if you want to attract the best, you need to pay the best.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou only have to look at Specials. A number have got a really strong public service ethic and the single factor that holds them back from joining the regular officers is the compensation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat tells me that other industries pay better for their skills than we can in ours. That shouldn\u2019t be right,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should be in a position where we\u2019re falling over people wanting to be officers so that the pool from which we can draw our new officers is huge. Therefore, we should be able to take the cream, the very best of those officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Going for quality rather than quantity when it comes to candidates should be the tactic, Steve believes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe shouldn\u2019t just accept what we can get with a woefully low starting salary because the volume\u2019s high enough for us to kid ourselves that the starting salary\u2019s acceptable. It\u2019s not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to pay more in order to increase the level of people that you can attract to the role so that our ability to take the very best of those people is as strong as it can be. In that way, we\u2019re all benefiting. Society, serving officers, the lot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
POOR starting salaries for police officer roles could be preventing the best candidates coming forward, according to Essex Police Federation. The National Police Chiefs Council has said the starting salary\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\/96561"}],"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=96561"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97074,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96561\/revisions\/97074"}],"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=96561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}