“Our members have endured years of below-inflation pay awards that have seen rank and file officers drop up to 23% below where they should be,” says Alex Duncan, the Police Federation of England and Wales’ (PFEW) National Secretary.
We are recommending a 5% uplift in pay for police officers this year, followed by 5% in both 2020/21 and 2021/22 to start the journey of returning police pay to where it deserves to be.
The NPCC are offering 4% in 2019/20, followed by a pay freeze next year, so that they can model the financial impact of their proposed pay structure. “The modelling should already have been done,” says Mr Duncan. “It’s not fair to penalise officers for lack of progress on pay reform.”
Before making their recommendations to the Government, the Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) considers evidence from a number of organisations, including us, the NPCC, the Police Superintendents’ Association, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) and the Home Office.
One of our eight recommendations has sparked debate on social media – On-Call allowance. We are calling for officers to be paid the same rate as staff members: £29.17 per day. Further, we believe this should be paid to all ranks.
The NPCC’s submission calls for On-Call allowance to be paid at “a newer higher rate of £20 per call out”. However, as officers have pointed out, they aren’t currently paid this allowance per call out; it is one payment for a 24-hour period of on-call.
In their written evidence, the APCC don’t agree with a three-year proposal. They are recommending a 2.1% increase for officers this year.
In the last few years, the pay recommendations made by the PRRB to the Home Secretary have been ignored, and a revised, lower pay award made to officers. In response, we have initiated a judicial review into the lawfulness of this course of action by the Government.
Read National Chair John Apter’s blog outlining why our issue is not with the PRRB process itself, but with the Government, which is why we have continued to take part in the submission process this year.
