Federation Chair to continue lobbying for increased South East Allowance for Essex officers

18 August 2020

Seeing colleagues in neighbouring counties receive an increase in allowance payments while they don’t is a real ‘kick in the teeth’ for Essex police officers, Essex Police Federation has said.

Officers in Kent have just seen their South East allowance payments, in place to help them pay for the higher cost of living in the region, upped by £500 a year to £2,500.

Met officers could be in line for another £1,000 taking their allowance to £5,000. Essex officers meanwhile get just £2,000 a year.

Laura Heggie, Essex Police Federation Chair said it’d been a ‘bone of contention’ for a while now and that she plans to take up the matter with the Chief Constable who has the power to increase the fund.

“The power for the rise in the South East allowance lays purely in the hands of the Chief Constable, and I’ve had this conversation with the chief several times now, and we will continue to have that conversation.

“He knows it’s coming, and the officers in Essex deserve for it to be increased,” Laura said.

“Colleagues in other forces getting a rise is another kick in the teeth. Seeing the Met and Kent get that increase and not us is hard for officers to accept.

“I know from the conversations that I’ve had with the Chief that he says that if the money were there, he would gladly pay it, but that doesn’t help the officers month to month. We are still losing officers – it’s a real bone of contention.” Laura added.

It’s particularly galling when officers from Essex work with their county colleagues on jobs and campaigns.

And it’s compounded by the fact that Detective Inspectors and Detective Sergeants could be working on a joint campaign, doing the same role, but getting paid different amounts, Laura said.

“Essex has recognised that we’ve got an issue with recruitment and retention of Detective Constables, and as a result of that, again in line with Kent, they’ve awarded what is at the moment a one-off payment to all Detective Constables of £1,200 for the year,” Laura said.

“That’s great, but that hasn’t been given to Detective Sergeants or Detective Inspectors, so they’re left feeling devalued.

“Kent has paid Detective Sergeants this bonus money as well as their staff investigators which hasn’t happened in Essex. We’ve got a lot of officers, especially within SCD, from Essex and Kent who work in the same office.

“So you could have a Kent Detective Sergeant sitting next to an Essex Detective Sergeant and the Kent colleague is taking home an extra £1,700 a year with the South East allowance and the detective payments than their colleague for doing the same job.

“It causes resentment, and we’re dealing with the complaints it has raised,” Laura said.

“We put it to the Chief and the Chief Officer team, and it has been acknowledged because I thought it was important that the Chief officer team understood how they’d left officers feeling.

“The Chief has said that there’s nothing he could do in relation to the payment for other than Detective Constables as the problem with recruitment and retention isn’t there in other ranks, but they were going to be putting out some communications to the Detective Sergeants, in particular, to ensure that the message was passed on about how much the Chief values them.

“But that still makes it hard for the officers to swallow.”