Decisive action needed to resolve police retention crisis

9 July 2024

West Midlands Police Federation has called on the new government and police leaders to act decisively to resolve the retention crisis in policing.

Deputy chair Jase Dooley said the voice of police officers had to be heard in pay negotiations.

He said the government urgently needed to restore fairness to police pensions by resolving what has become known as the ‘pension trap’ affecting older, more experienced officers.

A new, more arbitrary misconduct and vetting regime along with constant negative media coverage was also all having a devastating impact on confidence. 

And he suggested that there needed to be more openness towards student and young in-service officers about what the role of a police officer was and the restrictions it places on them.

Jase said: “A lot of the problems in policing are to do with issues around retention.

“You can recruit, recruit, recruit but you’ve got to have the training infrastructure, the stations and the equipment in place.

“Policing is all about the people who do the job, they’re the biggest asset.

“If the colleagues aren’t confident, supported, and feel they aren’t sufficiently renumerated, including their pension, they aren’t going to do their best and they’re going to disappear to another job as soon as they can – and they are.

“We need to incentivise long service to retain skills such as in neighbourhood policing, which the new government has said it wants to prioritise.

“The old pension used to do this because it ensured officers were well rewarded for 30 years’ service. It was well worth staying. Now it's 40 years standard and many aren't even paying in.

Perfect storm

“Equally, older colleagues are weighing up taking their pension sooner than they would have and topping up with a job in the private sector rather than staying in, if they can.

“It's a perfect storm. This is widely recognised within policing and we need politicians to start listening to the voice of the service.”

West Midlands Police Federation deputy chair Jase Dooley

Jase called for police to be given pay negotiation rights which, he said, would allow them to talk directly to decision makers, about the reality of policing.

“The only way you can get through these issues is talking to each other,” Jase said.

“It’s important so we can set our stall out to the government formally through a process that cannot be avoided. Policing is a different role completely to any other emergency service.

"Other emergency service colleagues don’t have the level of restrictions on their lives, don’t have their rest days cancelled at a whim to attend court, or are told that in nine months’ time you can’t go on your holiday because there’s a court case and it’s set for three weeks. But they can join a trade union and go on strike if the feeling is strong enough. 

“The previous government didn’t seem to understand that, and it’s what we’re trying to get across to the new government, but at the moment we still don’t have a seat at the table.”

This year’s Pay and Morale Survey found that 15 per cent of respondents from West Midlands Police intended to resign from the service.

The main reasons for intending to leave were morale, how the police are treated by the government and the impact of the job on mental health and wellbeing (with 82 per cent, 78 per cent and 70 per cent respectively).

Jase said that another reason officers who were younger in service were leaving was because they were joining the police without realising the restrictions it would place on their lives.

Unique job

“This is a unique job and I don’t think recruitment departments are telling people what they’re actually joining,” he said.

“When the Federation does its input, we try to explain to them that their lives have changed because there are restrictions on their lives, on their social lives, and on their personal lives.

“They need to be mindful of what they do on social media.

“They need to know they’re going to work shifts when they join.

“They are going to deal with and see horrendous stuff.

“And half the time they’re going to be told they can’t go home on time because there’s an extension of duty and no one else to deal with it."

Jase added: “They need to understand that the police can put them anywhere.

“At some point, they have to be an investigator, a neighbourhood officer. They have to do the roles as part of their training.

“When they finish their training, it’s decided where they’re going to go for their final posting and that is determined by what the Force needs.

“So officers can be posted anywhere in the Force doing any role, and I don’t think a lot of people understand this.”

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