Avon and Somerset Police Federation can make the “quiet voices” of officers heard by the force’s Chief Officer team, following criticism that there has been a communication breakdown with frontline staff.

The latest PEEL report into the force said inspectors were told that officers and staff “don’t always feel that they are listened to”.

And Tom Gent, Federation Secretary, said the Federation had a key role in helping to remedy that situation.

He said: “We want to work with the force while acknowledging that they need to listen more and obviously we have a key role in that. We have seen some signs that they’re saying the right things but we need action to follow on from the words.

“I wasn’t surprised when we saw what the inspectors had said; it’s what we hear every day from the frontline, that they’re not listened to.

“The rank structure is so strong in the police that there is a fear of talking up to higher ranks, but that’s so important because otherwise that’s where we get that disconnect between very senior leaders and people actually doing the policing.

“In the short term, I’d like to see more visibility from senior leaders to the front line because that’s still not good enough. They need to hear about the challenges away from HQ and have a willingness to accept when things aren’t right. They need to explain properly if there are difficult decisions to be made, ensure that the frontline are being consulted properly, and clearly communicate the reasoning behind those decisions.

“At the moment there is a top-down approach, but we would like it to be more collaborative. The Chief has said that she wants to ‘reverse the pyramid’ so we need to hold her to account. Words are easy but we need to see action to back them up.

“As a Federation, we can work with the force to help the senior leaders ensure they have got the voice of the front line. Some people don’t want to speak to them but they’re happy to speak to us. We can ensure we can amplify some of the quiet voices across the force.

“We need to ensure we are having regular meetings with the Chief Officer team and the Chief, and feeding all of this information back to them.”

The HMICFRS inspectors also criticised the force for not meeting its own targets for minimum staffing levels. The report said: “The constabulary’s teams are often not sufficiently resourced. Also, there is a variety of capability and capacity within the teams, and they aren’t always well balanced to meet demand. For example, the constabulary hasn’t evenly distributed response drivers and Taser-trained officers.”

And Tom agreed with this assessment, saying that the problem arose from both not having enough officers, and officers not necessarily being deployed in the areas where they are most needed.

He continued: “Across policing, the front line can sometimes be put at the back of the queue because there’s lots of other interesting projects that get the attention, whereas the front line can get left behind and forgotten a bit.

“We need to keep a real focus on the front line, both for investigations, neighbourhood policing and response, which are all areas which came out in our staff survey as well.

“We are seeing the effects of this in retention, nationally our pay has been eroded over a number of years, and on top of that in Avon and Somerset we have this workplace stress as a result of being under resourced. We’re struggling to maintain our numbers. Officers are struggling with demand, workload and the stress of not having enough people.

“The force must also ensure it is taking the welfare of officers into consideration; ensuring some of those support services are enough of a priority. The PEEL report talked about the Occupational Health Unit and excessive waiting times for appointments. It is vital that this is properly resourced to ensure that our officers receive sufficient support when they need it.”