More Officers Planning To Leave Over Pay And Stress

AN increasing number of officers are planning to leave policing due to stress and poor pay, South Yorkshire Police Federation has warned.

Statistics show that, nationally, a record number of officers are leaving the police service in favour of a career in the private sector. The knock-on effect is that a third of serving officers now have fewer than five years’ experience.

South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent has said that officers are “dealing with unbelievable stress for an absolute pittance” and that police pay is down nearly 20% in real terms since 2000. The Government is said to be planning a pay offer of just 3.5%.

Steve said that, while the Metropolitan Police and other forces in the south of England were probably feeling the pinch more, it was also a problem in his force.

Steve said: “I’m having serious discussions with an increasing number of officers, who say: ‘If we don’t get a good pay deal, I’m off’. They’re not just saying this into the wind. They’re saying: ‘I will go and explore this, and I will go and join this organisation’.

“So what’s concerning is that people are pre-emptively planning to leave policing, and I’m having that conversation more and more.

“And if they start to do that, coupled with the real challenges we face with so many of our frontline officers having less than two years’ service, we’ve got a potential storm.

“I don’t think the Government realises the catastrophic effects of this. If you’re losing officers from both ends of the spectrum – people who are really experienced and people at the start of their career – you’ve got a real challenge on your hands.

“At the moment, with the current rhetoric that’s going on, policing is not a place people want to be. Cops are fed up. Cops have had enough of being vilified for everything that they do and that they don’t do. So we could find ourselves in a position where, in a year or two, policing could be seriously stretched.”