‘Take Rest Days To Ensure You Have Downtime’

11 September 2020

Officers are owed 480,000 rest days across England and Wales – partly due to resourcing issues as a result of COVID-19.

Essex Police Federation says the pandemic has meant officers haven’t been able to take breaks as they usually would.

However, Chair Laura Heggie has urged officers to ensure they get time away from the frontline as best they can.

She said: “In Essex, it’s not that officers can’t take a rest day. But COVID has probably changed that a little bit this year, more so than any other time, because we didn’t have as many people off during the summer holidays or the school holidays as we usually would have done because people couldn’t necessarily go away.

“That’s partly why rest days are stockpiling. You might generally be taking a day off to go to the theatre, to go out with friends but that’s not available to people now.

“I was talking to someone in our resource management department who said one of their roles at the moment is to try to start reducing reduce the number of rest days owed to officers.

“Regulations say that rest days, when cancelled, should be reallocated to another date within four days of that rest day being cancelled. That doesn’t take into account rest days that build up as a result of public holidays, for instance, and times like that.”

Laura said that it is vital for officers’ mental and physical wellbeing that they do take a break when they can.

She said: “Rest days, annual leave, are all really, really important for officers to take because that is your downtime.

“We have conversations about the Regulations quite often around the time where officers are being chased up to reallocate their rest days or start to use some of their rest days.

“We have these conversations, which is that the rest day doesn’t have to be taken, you don’t have to book it for a certain period. So you can book it for in advance and then move it once you have a commitment that comes nearer, which would then save it being necessarily in the pot.

“It’s important that people still take rest days or leave to spend time with family and get downtime, for their mental health because that is affected by being at work all the time.

“Sometimes we don’t even see that, and it is a case of just needing that time out.”