Message from the chair: awards recognise every day bravery
15 June 2026
Each year, usually in July, around 70 to 80 officers descend on London for the national Police Bravery Awards.
Accompanied by a guest of their choice, once in the capital all the nominees attend a reception hosted by the Home Secretary of the day in the afternoon before an evening awards reception where regional winners are chosen ahead of the overall winner being named.
The awards are, for me, the highlight of the policing year, recognising the daily acts of bravery by officers the length and breadth of the country who put their lives on the line while carrying out their duties, serving and protecting their communities.
The nominees themselves often play down their bravery, saying they were just doing their job and expressing their pride at being able to represent their force and their colleagues at the event.
Our own nominee for this year’s awards – once again organised by the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) – is Mitchell Bull and I am looking forward to joining him and his wife in London next month.
While the focus on the day is quite rightly on the officers and their brave acts, it is not unusual for details of our annual pay award to be announced around the time of the bravery awards – in fact, I think one year details were made public while the nominees were in Downing Street for the pre-event reception.
I am not sure of when we will get to hear what pay rise – if any – we can all expect from 1 September this year but, given the current economic situation, I don’t think the signs are very positive.
However, in March this year, PFEW put forward a case for officers to receive a minimum pay rise of seven per cent for the next three years.
It explained its rationale for sustained investment in officer pay in a report to the Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) on the back of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) calling for a fully funded 3.5 per cent pay rise from 1 September 2026 – or a 2.5 per cent uplift if not fully funded.
At the time, we argued that a rise of 3.5 per cent did not go far enough in helping stem the current officer retention crisis and pointed out that it would amount to another real terms pay cut for police officers, which is doubly galling given the seemingly never-ending increases to the cost of living.
This is not the only area in which we find ourselves disagreeing with the NPCC though. Plans by police chiefs to reduce officers’ pay when they have to work on what would have been a rest day have prompted PFEW to launch a new campaign.
The Hands Off Our Rest Days initiative sits under the current Federation Copped Enough campaign for better pay, working conditions and support.
Officers are entitled to a minimum four hours’ compensation at time and a half when they work on a cancelled rest day or bank holiday. This aims to compensate them for their disrupted protected rest time and family commitments.
But the NPCC, in its annual submission to the PRRB, is proposing this is reduced to time and a third, calculated 15-minutes at a time for the exact period worked. It also wants to tighten the rules around the re-rostering of cancelled rest days.
A Federation poll revealed, perhaps unsurprisingly, 85 per cent of police officers who responded oppose such changes.
These proposals could further hit officer morale and add to the difficulties we are facing in terms of retaining our officers; an issue that is already crippling many forces. The Federation is warning that a “broken” police service of underpaid, overworked and under threat people risks a public safety crisis – with the loss of experienced officers set to cost taxpayers £10 billion in five years.
I am at a loss to understand how members of the NPCC do not see that this could hit retention further at a time when we are actively recruiting new officers but barely managing to counter the numbers leaving.
New figures have shown that forces across the UK owe officers nearly 820,000 rest days while our own force owes 59,983 rest days, making you question how it’s ever going to be possible for officers to get these days back.
The statistics show the scale of the problem, but perhaps do not fully get over the fact that these owed rest days not only mean officers have missed out on time with their loved ones but also that they are not getting chance to get the rest they need, which will have an impact on their physical and mental health.
To ensure that we get our message across on this matter, the Federation is urging all officers to sign a digital picket line calling on the Government to take immediate action to pay police fairly, stop the mass exodus of experienced officers and protect police officers on the frontline.
If you haven’t signed it yet, please do so – it only takes a couple of minutes and yet the more signatures we have the more powerful our message will be.
