Police Deserve At Least 5% Pay Rise This Year

POLICE officers deserve a 5% pay at the very least to make up for a decade of below-inflation increases, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.

According to its submission to the Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB), the Home Office recent funding settlement provides funding for a pay uplift of ‘at least 2%’ in the 2022/23 financial year.

But Steve Kent, South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair, said that figure doesn’t get anywhere near the amount of money officers have lost after years of pay freezes.

He said: “Police officers have been neglected during Covid while a lot of other public services haven’t, even though we’ve been at the front line of it.

“We’re at a 20% loss in terms of pay when we look at what’s happened over the last ten years. So this is part of a much, much bigger picture.

“Police pay is lagging and has been lagging there for some time, and our officers now are so much more financially worse off than what they were even 10 years ago compared to the cost of living. It’s absolutely vital that we get an initial, at the very least, sharp increase in pay so that officers can at least redress the balance.

“My view is it has to be an absolute minimum of 5%. Ideally we would like more than that but that’s what we need to be looking at. And that’s not acceptable when the Home Office are suggesting 2%. Well that’s not enough and officers are struggling financially.

“Officers are struggling with the increasing costs of living. All they will be doing with this pay rise is just buying the necessities. We’ve really got to start going forward now and repairing the damage to police officers’ pay, which has been pretty much stagnant now for 12 years.”

The Police Federation of England and Wales has branded the PRRB’s proposal as ‘disgusting’.

National PFEW Vice-Chair, Ché Donald, said: “Given that police officer pay has fallen by 20% in real terms since 2010, I can only assume the Home Office recommendation of a two per cent pay award to the Police Remuneration Review Body contains a typo and missed out the much needed zero after the two to make 20.

“Anything else is not just grossly unfair, it is disgusting and shows just how little this Government really values police officers.”