Message from your Chair - Mike Reed

23 May 2022

Last week the Police Federation of England & Wales (PFEW) held its annual conference. At this conference delegates were asked to vote on a subscription increase that mirrored any pay rise that is awarded by the government this September.

The vote had been amended to ‘track’ pay rises after initial submission by the National Board was a flat increase. The submission was amended on request of a National Council member (National Council membership is made of Chairs & Secretaries from each force) as they thought that any raise in subscriptions should be linked to performance of the PFEW in relation to their ability and success to achieve pay uplifts for members.

This conference was attended by five of your local Federation Representatives who were each able to vote.

Although the idea of linking subs to the performance and ability for PFEW to secure greater remuneration for its members seems sound in what it sets out to achieve, your delegates voted against this motion. In favour of no increases.

I personally was extremely disappointed that the motion to increase subscriptions in line with ‘any’ pay award this September was passed by Conference.

Although I know that PFEW is struggling with its funding and there are some risks to it via litigation, around Pension Challenges and a Cyber attack, as a board the City Fed believes that it feels too much like the membership paying after being let down by PFEW over big issues.

This together with that fact that our members quite simply don’t have either the standard of living they once had nor the disposable income, we have decided that before this increase occurs that we will bring a paper to our branch and ask that any increase is NOT passed on to our members for the 2022/2023 year. This amount will hopefully be covered by our branch reserve, so that it does not come your pockets.

This is a process that is being mirrored by the Met Fed and an approach we have taken as a region (Met & City form one of PFEW’s eight regions between them).

If you have questions or wish to discuss this further, please contact either myself or the Branch Board Secretary, Andy Philp.

Yours sincerely

Mike Reed

Chair