Government “robbing Peter to pay Paul” when it comes to Policing
Government proposals to boost the police service and the number of Bobbies on the Beat amount to little more than “robbing Peter to pay Paul”, Greater Manchester Police Federation has said.
The Home Secretary has pledged to put another 13,000 officers on the beat over the course of the next parliament, including a named, contactable police officer in every community, but chiefs are warning that they will have to make cuts in forces to meet the funding shortfall.
With chiefs having to ring fence police officer numbers, the only savings that can be made will be among police staff, GMP Federation Chair Mike Peake said.
“When those police staff posts fall, who’s going to do that back office function? It’s going to end up with police officers. So you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul and actually paying probably a larger wage to police officers to do a police staff role. That’s going to take cops away from frontline policing, which is not what the public want,” he said.
GMP is already falling short of officers and staff in every department and district, Mike said.
“In some departments, I’m hearing that there’s almost a 50% deficit in numbers. How can you function like that? It’s a real problem, and obviously that means then cops are trying to do twice as much work as one police officer should be doing, and it’s having an impact on stress, work, life, balance, sickness – and the student officers in GMP.
“We’ve got an attrition rate of just over 33% so student officers are coming into policing, seeing how difficult it is, seeing what the stresses are, and they’re going and finding work somewhere else for less stress and probably similar money.
“So this pledge of 13,000 officers – where is the money coming from? Because we haven’t got enough police officers in GMP to meet demand as it is. GMP officers have more than 50,000 rest days owed. That’s because there just aren’t enough police officers. I don’t think the public realise and I don’t think the Government understands,” he added.
