Policing asks a lot of its people. But it is taking too much.

It is taking too much when hundreds of officers decide the only way they can afford the cost of living is to stop paying into their pension. When detectives investigating child abuse carry caseloads of 40, 50 or more. And when experienced officers hand in their warrant cards because they can earn similar money elsewhere without taking the trauma home.

These are not isolated cases. They are hallmarks of a system failing the people it relies upon.

Policing is a broken service that is breaking its people. More than 15 years of cuts have hollowed out the service, while falling morale, concerns about pay and mounting pressures have become entrenched.

This is no longer simply a morale problem. It is a public health emergency.

Officers are reporting levels of stress, fatigue and ill health that would raise serious concerns in any other profession. Rest days are lost, annual leave refused and overtime used to plug workforce gaps. Yet too often the response has been to treat the symptoms rather than the cause.

Today I have written to the Home Secretary, calling on her to recognise that emergency and put urgent measures in place to tackle it.

We also need urgent action to stop policing burning through its people. Half of PCs have fewer than five years’ service. Two-thirds of all officers resigning are those who have hit the five-year point and can give no more.

That is why PFEW is calling for an independent investigation into the health, wellbeing and welfare of officers in their first five years of service, bringing together the data and lived experience needed to put concrete measures in place to better support them.

And we cannot look away from the gravest consequence. Nearly 20 officers each year die by suicide. We have fought for national recording and reporting of police suicides and suicide attempts, called for common minimum standards of wellbeing and pushed for suicide-prevention training.

Reform is needed, and PFEW wants it to succeed. But reform cannot distract from the operational crisis officers face now. Nine months after police reform returned to the agenda, workloads are heavier, fatigue is rising and experience is walking out of the door.

Our message to government and policing leaders is clear: enough is enough.

Enough of treating exhaustion as commitment. Enough of treating experience as expendable. Enough of asking officers to give more when they have nothing left to give.

We have a broken service to fix, a profession to defend and a future to fight for. And we are going to fight for it.

 

Read the full speech here.