Redundancy would interfere with Office of Constable

HAVING the power to make police officers redundant would “interfere with the independent Office of Constable”, the Chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation has warned.

Police chiefs “are considering whether they reluctantly ask the Home Secretary to introduce compulsory redundancy as an option to manage significant further cuts to the service”.

But Neil Bowles said the power would see police officers “looking over their back and not doing their job properly.”

He feared that police officers could be “influenced about how to use their powers”.

“We can’t have a state where if someone turns around to an Inspector and say, ‘No I’m not going to arrest that person, I haven’t got the power to do so’, for that to be looked badly on that officer,” said Mr Bowles.

It is understood that at the Chief Constables’ Council meeting on 27 and 28 October, the option of making police officers redundant is to be discussed.

“We take on oath, or an attestation that we will police without fear or favour,” said Mr Bowles. “The introduction of possible redundancies would interfere with that, I believe. I’m also quite hopeful that most Chiefs will realise that they don’t need it.”

Mr Bowles said that he does not believe David Crompton, Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police, is now in favour of using the power.

“He would not want to make people redundant if they weren’t going to get their full redundancy – especially with the idea of public sector ‘exit caps’ being discussed by the Government,” said Mr Bowles. “We are considering voluntary redundancy, but I still can’t see that coming into our force at the moment because we’ve got hundreds of officers coming up for normal retirement between now and 2020.

“There’s also a high percentage of officers that have given up the ghost and decided that they don’t want to be a cop anymore and leaving without their full pension entitlement. In fact we’ve had 50 this year… we’re actually having to recruit people.”

Mr Bowles concluded that if police officers are to be made redundant, the Federation would push for full industrial rights.

“If we’re going to be treated like an employee then we should have all employee rights,” he said.