Inspecting Ranks Working ‘Unacceptably’ Long Hours

There should be a limit on how many hours inspecting ranks can work for free, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said, after a new survey found that almost a quarter of Inspectors were working up to an extra 40 hours a month.

Most of these hours are unpaid, the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) survey found, and it is now pushing for overtime payments.

Since the 1994 Police Negotiating Board Agreement, inspecting ranks have not been entitled to casual overtime payments. Part of the agreement was that they should not be expected to work regular additional hours.

However, since 1994 many Inspectors and Chief Inspectors have been working excessive hours, leading to burnout, stress and serious concerns over work-life balance and wellbeing. PFEW calls the Agreement “outdated” and says that inspecting ranks should receive overtime payments to act as a balance between the 1994 PNB Agreement and as compensation for additional hours worked.

Last year, South Yorkshire Police Federation did its own survey and found similarly worrying levels of overwork among inspecting ranks.

Federation Chair Steve Kent said: “Of course every rank faces its own challenges, and I believe every officer should be paid more. But we can’t have this situation where some Chief Inspectors and Inspectors are doing so many hours for free that, in essence, they’re being paid less per hour than Sergeants and PCs.

“What I would like to see is a limit to how many hours they can work for free, potentially an extra 10 hours a week. After that I think they should earn overtime. Then you’d start to see the working hours of Inspectors going down, because figures of 60 or 70 hours a week is just not acceptable.

“We are also challenging the force on this, because we don’t think South Yorkshire has enough Chief Inspectors and Inspectors, and we will be encouraging our inspecting ranks to report working time directive breaches going forward.

“We can’t keep having the situation where people are burning themselves out and putting themselves at risk. If people are working 60 hours a week as critical incident managers, for example, if they make a wrong decision or something goes wrong, we can guarantee the IOPC will be all over their working time, so people have really got to start looking after themselves.”