Derisory Pay Award from Government

26 July 2018

Hello All,

I thought I would make contact with you all to highlight the recent announcement from the Government on our pay award for 1^st September. The Government has stated that they’ve given us a 2% pay award but in reality with the 1% non-consolidated element of last year’s award disappearing in September effectively its just 1% and even less than that when you take into account other factors its 0.85%.

This pay award goes against the recommendations of the independent Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) – the very body that the Government set up to oversee police pay. This is the second year the PRRB has been ignored, so I now have no confidence in it going forward. The Federation asked for 3.4% this year and also requested that the 1% non-consolidated award from last year be made permanent. Well the pay review body recommended a 2% award and did recommend that the 1% non-consolidated be made consolidated (permanent).

It’s not lost on me or you that the independent pay body for MPs, when they recommend an inflation-busting 11% pay rise, Government accepted that in full and stated that they can’t reject the offer as it’s an independent pay review body. The hypocrisy in this is totally flabbergasting.

Many of you will know that as police officers we’re limited in what action we can take. Many officers have asked what we will do about this. Because of the law in Police Regulations, we have to accept the pay offer. But now is the time to redefine the relationship with a Government who clearly don’t care for policing. The Government’s actions are contemptible, disgraceful and a further kick in the teeth the hard working police officers.

Many of you will be angry and have a complete lack of trust in the way this Government is treating us and I totally agree with you. But I’m sorry to say I’m not surprised in the slightest. I have some meetings planned with Norfolk’s MP’s to discuss a range of issues impacting on you and the pay ward will be at the top of the list. I will leave them in no uncertain terms that the anger we feel at the way we are treated.

This Government should be utterly ashamed of itself. They are failing police officers and the public. I’ve been liaising with the national Fed and told them we need to look at all options, to show the Government and the public that we are worth more than what we have been offered.

I have said for some time that I have serious concerns about the financial vulnerability of police officers. This pay award does nothing to address this, in fact it does the opposite. It adds even more pressure to officers who are suffering financial hardship.

Below is an extract from the Pay Review Body:

The way in which the 2017/18 pay award was implemented – a consolidated 1% accompanied by a further non-consolidated 1%, did not reflect the recommendations we made in our previous report. The Review Body has an advisory role and it is clearly for the Government to decide ultimately what actual pay settlement there should be. However, as a practical matter, we have had to decide how we should approach the existence of a non-consolidated and time-limited element in the 2017/18 award, and what implications it should have for our recommendations on the 2018/19 award. We are also conscious of our role in the police officer pay machinery and of the obligation upon us to take into account the restrictions that police officers have had placed upon them with regard to withdrawing their labour and their limited industrial rights.

When setting out her reasons for the pay award last year, the then Home Secretary recognised the extraordinary contribution of police officers in responding to some of the most challenging situations the country has faced for a very long time. Based on the evidence we received, we do not consider that the operational demand facing police officers has diminished over the last year. If anything, the demands on officers nationwide are increasing at a time when officer headcount in a number of forces is reducing.

The non-consolidated 1% pay award for 2017/18 has been and will be paid monthly until the end of August 2018. A police officer would almost certainly consider this payment as part of their salary. The ending of the payment of the non-consolidated award would in our view constitute a pay cut and would be perceived as such by officers. The core costs of this non-consolidated pay award are already in the current paybill.

As I previously stated, the above shows that even though the Pay Review Body did not award us what the Fed argued for which was a 3.4% pay increase but went for 2% they did recommend that the 1% un-consolidated from last year should quite rightly be made consolidated.

I have a national meeting in the next 3 weeks which has been convened to discuss the Fed’s action as a result of this pay award.

I seek your views so can I ask that you approach one of the Fed reps locally (click here to see a list and pics of our Fed reps ) to feed in your suggestions to them who will in turn I feed them back to me to take to the national meeting. The suggestions have to be lawful, adhere to regulations and the codes of practice. We need to make our case for a decent and fair pay award now and going forward in the future. My counterparts across the country will be doing the same in getting the views of all Federated ranks. This will then direct what actions we take going forward.

I have attached the following documents:

The press release I sent to the county’s press/media outlets which I hope will try and make the public aware of the truth rather than Government spin. The EDP did an article in their paper yesterday and also online. Many of the regions radio stations also repeated my press release. Please click here for the EDP article that relates to the press release