Nicky discusses pay and morale survey in BBC Radio Wales interview

12 January 2023

The Police Federation’s Welsh lead has warned the number of officers looking to quit the service should be a major cause for concern and could have a huge impact on policing in the future.

Nicky Ryan was reacting to the findings from the latest Police Federation pay and morale survey which revealed 12 per cent of officers in Wales planned to leave in the next two years or sooner while 65 per cent would not recommend a career in policing to others.

Nicky told BBC Radio Wales: “We have just recruited 20,000 new officers throughout England and Wales to reach the Government’s uplift figures so we have shown that policing is still an attractive proposition.

“However, what we are not doing is retaining those officers because of those 20,000 recruited we know that 1,800 have already resigned.”

Nicky said the 2022 pay and morale survey, carried out by the Police Federation and involving officers at forces across England and Wales, was broadly in line with the previous year’s findings which suggested there had been little improvement in policing over the last 12 months.

“Sadly, the figures are very similar and there has not been an awful lot of change - one per two per cent in the odd area,” she said.

“But it is not surprising because our members don’t feel respected by the Government, they don’t feel valued by the Government and the Government has failed again to invest in policing.”

Commenting on the figures which showed 51 per cent of officers across the Welsh forces had low or very low morale, Nicky said: “In the coming days and weeks chief officers around Wales will look at the figures and if there is any good practice that can be implemented they will do so.

“But we need to dig deeper into these figures to find out what the problems are and what we can do to try to assist officers and make their lot a better one.”

Nicky admitted she had concerns for the future of policing in Wales and urged the Government to make funding and investment in the service more of a priority.

She said: “Over the last three years there has been a big push on recruitment and if forces don’t achieve their targets they will be penalised by the Home Office.

“But this is against a backdrop of big cuts, not just to frontline officers, but also to back office functions, training functions, admin functions - even things like the fleets of vehicles we drive around in.

“So the forces have done an amazing job to get those figures through the door but I think the 1,800 resignations show that maybe the job they thought they were joining was not the job that they actually joined.

“It’s a tough old career with a lot of pressure and it does take its toll on an officer’s health, mental health and family life.

When asked if she was concerned about the future of policing, she replied: “Very much so. In other figures that were released last week we are losing nine officers a day who are applying for Australian police forces. If we can’t retain experience, where is our police force of the future? Where is our direct experience and skillset of the future?

“The Government really needs to have a good look at what it is doing to our police service and needs to offer some long-term funding to chief constables so they can plan ahead.”