You will have seen that the Government has accepted the recommendation from the PRRB of a consolidated increase of 4.75% to all police officer ranks and pay points with effect from 1 September 2024.
Bedfordshire Police Federation chair Stephen Bozward says the system for determining police pay must change after it was announced officer wages would increase by 4.75 per cent this year.
Steve gave a cautious welcome to the increase but said that it is not enough for hard working officers and the dangers they face..
“An increase of 4.75 per cent added to last year’s seven per cent rise, is a small step towards pay restoration,” Steve said.
But there’s still a long way to go until we have parity with where police pay was before the austerity years and we will continue to campaign for fairer funding. What this does is highlight the need for a new, independent police pay mechanism.
It won’t be lost on many people that junior doctors have been told their pay will increase by 22 per cent over the next two years.
Good luck to them, it is obvious that things would be different for police officers if we had industrial rights, like the junior doctors, and we had a fair and independent pay review system.
Following a recent poll, the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) will launch a campaign for a new mechanism for determining officer pay awards which includes collective bargaining and access to binding arbitration in recognition of the unique restrictions placed on police officers who, for example, cannot join a trade union or go on strike.
Policing is a unique and demanding role, with restrictions placed on officers’ work and personal lives.
Police colleagues face traumatic incidents on a daily basis and put themselves in harm’s way to protect others.
It’s unfair that other public services have means of demanding better pay while the police have both hands tied behind their backs whenever they negotiate pay increases.
Without a new system in place, we are always at the mercy of the Government of the day.
- London Weighting will increase by 4.75% (This does NOT include the South East Allowance as received in Beds)
- The on-call Allowance will be increased from £20 to £25
- The Dog Handlers’ Allowance should be uprated by 4.75% and the additional rate for officers with more than one dog be raised from 25% to 50% of the rate for the first dog
- The PRRB recommended that the chief officer of police in each force should be given the discretion to set the starting salary for new constables at either pay point 1 or pay point 2 on the constables’ pay scale. This recommendation has been accepted, but implementation will be subject to detailed proposals from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) on the circumstances in which this discretion should be used, along with transition arrangements for those constables on pay point 1, to inform amendments to the Police Regulations 2003
- The annual leave entitlements for officers in the federated ranks and recommended the time it takes to reach the maximum entitlement of 30 days should be reduced from 20 to 10 years, with effect from 1 April 2025 and phased in over three years. This recommendation was accepted, subject to the submission of a satisfactory Equality Impact Assessment by the NPCC to the Home Office.
- The annual leave entitlement for new entrants will be increased from 22 to 25 days, with implementation taking effect on 1 April 2025.
- The Home Office will provide £175m additional funding in 2024-25 to forces to help with the cost of the pay increase.
PFEW’s statement on the news is below.
The Police Federation of England & Wales welcomes today’s announcement that the new government has accepted the pay review body recommendation in full, and that police officer pay for 2024/25 will increase by 4.75% per cent across all ranks. This increase, coming on top of last year’s rise, goes some way to closing the gap between the 17 per cent real-term pay cut officers have suffered since 2010 as a result of successive below-inflation rises. It is disappointing, however, that the PRRB’s recommended increase was below than offered to other professions, given the unique status of police officers. The pay review body has ignored calls from the National Police Chiefs’ Council for officers to receive a 6% increase and made a recommendation which increases the differential between the pay of police and other public sector workers.
Calum Macleod, National Secretary of the Police Federation, said: “While we don’t believe that one group of public sector workers should be set against another, the pay review body recommendation shows that they do not understand policing and its needs. Poor pay and morale means police officers aren’t staying in the force and we are losing valuable experience from the service. The Federation is right to sit outside a process which does not recognise the role that police officers perform in society and the risks they take.”
Mukund Krishna, PFEW Chief Executive, said: “The underlying problem is a broken pay mechanism that does not allow for negotiation, only the imposition of a fixed pay award. In a recent poll, 98% of officers supported the Federation’s call for a return to collective bargaining with binding arbitration, and we look forward to working closely with the new government to fix the current system. It is also important that this pay award is funded by new money so that police chiefs aren’t forced to fund it through cuts to other essential services.”