Kent Chair calls on Government to improve funding for South East Allowance

29 July 2019

The Kent Police Federation Chairman has said that the South East allowance given to Kent Police officers is “no longer doing what it was introduced to do”.

Chris Carter has called on the Government to find the funding to help the allowance to go further and assist officers with rising inflation levels.

“Around 2001 we had a South East allowance introduced for the forces in the South East including Kent and the idea of that was to help with the cost of living.”

Now, Chris says that the allowance for Kent officers has never changed since 2001 and that has caused real issues for retaining officers.

“Depending on what rate of inflation you use we are looking at between 30 to 40 percent real terms value reduction in that South East allowance.

“And at the moment any increase in the allowance would have to be funded by the force itself, there’s no extra funding coming from central government for that, so again it’s another issue where we would call on the government to fund that properly so that officers can receive the increase in the South East allowance that they are entitled to”, he said.

Chris added: “What we’ve seen since 2010 is, in real terms, an 18 percent income cut for police officers across the country, so a two-and-a-half percent increase as her (Theresa May) last act is not really going to scratch the surface to repair the damage that she did to policing.”

New Prime Minister Boris Johnson also recently pledged an extra 20,000 police officers, across the UK, which Chris welcomed but cautioned the government in announcing an increase without proper thought for funding.

“We’ve seen that number cut across the country since 2010 and we need those officers to be replaced and we probably need to go further than that, 20,000 is a great start but it’s not going to be an easy task.

“But…the Government cannot just keep announcing increases and then relying on forces or local taxpayers to find that money, we need proper investment from central government”, Chris concluded.

Chris was speaking to the BBC Radio Kent Breakfast Show This Morning.