Pay rise response: Still work to be done on police pay mechanism

30 July 2024

Dyfed Powys Police Federation acting chair Delme Rees has responded to the announced 4.75 per cent pay rise for officers.

Delme hopes the pay increase will help relieve the financial pressures on officers and ease the retention crisis.

But he said the announcement, which came on the same day as junior doctors were awarded a 22 per cent pay rise, highlighted the need for a new, independent police pay mechanism.

Delme said: “The increase of 4.75 per cent, coming after last year’s 7 per cent rise, is a small step towards pay restoration for our members.

Financial pressures

“There’s still a long way to go until we reach that point, but hopefully this award will help to ease the very real financial pressures that members face.

“However, it won’t be lost on many people that other public sector workers have had higher pay awards and it was below the 6 per cent figure proposed by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. It’s not about setting one group of public sector workers against another – but things may be different for police officers if we had industrial rights, like they do in other sectors, and a fair and independent pay review system.”

The Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) will launch a campaign for a new mechanism for determining officer pay awards following the recent poll of members, as 98 per cent of those were in favour of doing so.

This will include collective bargaining and access to binding arbitration, in recognition of the unique restrictions placed on police officers who, for example, cannot join a trade union or go on strike.

Delme said: “Policing is a unique and demanding role, with restrictions placed on officers’ work and personal lives.

“They face traumatic incidents daily and put themselves in harm’s way to protect others, and that needs to be recognised and reflected in our pay and remuneration in a way that just isn’t happening now. The current mechanism does not allow for negotiation, only the imposition of a fixed pay award which leaves us at the mercy of the government of the day.

“The Federation looks forward to working with the new government to address this.”

Other announcements include:

• The on-call allowance will be increased from £20 to £25
• The dog handlers’ allowance should be uprated by 4.75 per cent and the additional rate for officers with more than one dog be raised from 25 per cent to 50 per cent of the rate for the first dog
• The PRRB recommended that the chief officer of police in each force should be given the discretion to set the starting salary for new constables at either pay point 1 or pay point 2 on the constables’ pay scale. This recommendation has been accepted, but implementation will be subject to detailed proposals from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) on the circumstances in which this discretion should be used, along with transition arrangements for those constables on pay point 1, to inform amendments to the Police Regulations 2003
• The annual leave entitlements for officers in the federated ranks and recommended the time it takes to reach the maximum entitlement of 30 days should be reduced from 20 to 10 years, with effect from 1 April 2025 and phased in over three years. This recommendation was accepted, subject to the submission of a satisfactory Equality Impact Assessment by the NPCC to the Home Office  
• The annual leave entitlement for new entrants will be increased from 22 to 25 days, with implementation taking effect on 1 April 2025
• The Home Office will provide £175 million in additional funding in 2024-25 to forces to help with the cost of the pay increase.

READ MORE: Fed member shares pride at ‘Women in Policing’ recognition.