Federation seeks 3.4 per cent officer pay rise

6 February 2018

Rank and file police officers should be given a 3.4 per cent pay rise in September this year, according to the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW).

The Federation has set out the reasoning behind this claim in a submission to the Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB). As with previous years, the submission has been made jointly with the Police Superintendents’ Association (PSA).

Andy Fittes, general secretary of PFEW, explained that the Federation’s analysis of the economic circumstances meant the 3.4 per cent claim was considered to be in line with inflation and said the unconsolidated one per cent element of last year’s pay increase should now be consolidated and should not affect this year’s uplift.

“The Home Secretary must act on the independent advice of the PRRB: doing otherwise last year has undermined the credibility of the process, and the mechanisms that this Government introduced,” he said.

The submission to the PRRB goes on to accuse the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) of a lack of transparency in the pay review process and says there is an implication that the NPCC’s plans for pay reform are further progressed than the Federation understands them to be.

It also criticises a lack of engagement by the NPCC, a failure to bring discussions to the appropriate fora and a lack of involvement in the Police Consultative Forum in particular.

In addition, the NPCC’s proposals for officer apprenticeship pay to start at £18,000 were considered “a derisory offer”, which would “cause considerable hardship to any apprentice taking it up”.

The Federation and PSA sees no reason to move away from their recommendation in last year’s submission that apprentices should be incorporated within the existing pay scale.

“The NPCC has failed to provide proposals or time-limited targeted pay, despite the fact they have asked for targeted pay to be included two years in a row in the remit letter. We are dumbfounded as the NPCC has failed to provide any proposals, either in draft or final,” the general secretary concluded.

The PRRB submission.