Federation Chair: Extra officers are adding to the demand already placed on Sergeants

4 February 2021

The influx of thousands of new police officers has left serving Sergeants with greater workloads, demands and more stress at work, a new report has found.

The Police Federation of England and Wales report, “The Demand Capacity & Welfare Survey 2020 - The Officer Uplift and Sergeant Impacts”, found that more than half of sergeants felt they had insufficient time and resources to support new Constables.

Under the Government’s “Uplift” programme, 20,000 new police officers are to be recruited by March 2023, taking the service back to the numbers of officers it had a decade ago.

This recruitment drive will see many Sergeants having more inexperienced PCs to supervise than ever before, with more than 6,600 officers recruited as part of that 20,000 over the past year. The new PFEW research lays bare the impact of this flood of rookie recruits.

Mel Warnes, Chair of Surrey Police Federation, said: “The increase of officers is a good thing. But extra officers require extra trainers, extra tutors, extra supervisors; the list goes on. The pressures on tutors (coaches) and Sergeants has massively increased. Tutors are having to triple up on tutees and this of course increases the team size for a Sergeant. The ratios of officers to Sergeants has obviously increased.

“The pressures on Sergeants, many of whom are young in service themselves has increased. Their teams are more inexperienced and required more supervision. Sergeants were already struggling with their team’s high workloads owing to the demand and capacity of their team. Extra officers have added to this stress.”

There are also new supervision demands due to the Apprenticeship route, which sees student officers working on a degree while managing the needs of the job, Mel said.

Over 1,000 Sergeants responded to the survey. Many comments indicated that inadequate training for the new recruits had led to additional burdens being placed on Sergeants and tutor constables, and some Sergeants highlighted that the sudden influx of inexperienced officers could pose a risk to officer safety.

Others raised issues about limited resources; such as a lack of facilities, equipment and space for the new recruits to use, whilst others raised concerns over the general impact of the officer uplift on sergeant workloads and negative consequences on their wellbeing.

Dave Bamber, PFEW’S Professional Development Lead, said: “All too often the organization is happy to assess sergeants but not develop them. This influx of younger, more inexperienced officers will put pressure on staff to supervise them when they haven’t had the additional training they need to do this. Added to this, the recruits’ lack of experience means that more supervision will be needed.”

To read the survey in full, go to: https://www.polfed.org/media/16560/dcw_sergeants-report-20-01-21-v10.pdf