“Decimated Pay” Needs Long-Term Fix, Says South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair

A one-off pay increase will not be enough to remunerate officers for the difficult and dangerous job they do, Steve Kent, Chairman of South Yorkshire Police Federation, has warned as colleagues await a decision on the 2025/26 settlement.

“Police pay has been decimated so much over the last decade and a half, and it absolutely needs to be repaired”, Steve said as the Police Remuneration Review Body submitted its 2025 report to the Home Office and Treasury.

While he welcomed the most recent rise, Steve urged the government to set out “a medium to long term plan about repairing the damage to policing which has left us around 20 per cent below everybody else”.

Steve said that the Federation is often called a “toothless tiger” because it lacks industrial rights, which is why it must lobby for change. He stressed the need for binding arbitration and collective bargaining to protect officers and secure proper pay review arrangements. Rather than annual figures of three, four or five per cent that can vary or even fall short, he wants to see a multi-year commitment.

“If that means a three or four year pay announcement at some point, then that’s what we need. We must look past the short term and into the medium term,” he said.

John Partington, acting National Secretary of the Police Federation of England and Wales, described  “a moment of reckoning for the government”. He pointed out that a generation of officers has suffered real terms pay cuts of more than twenty per cent alongside soaring workloads and relentless pressure.

“They’ve kept showing up, protecting the public in the face of rising demand and decreasing support,” he said. But morale is at rock bottom and experienced officers are leaving in droves. John said public safety demands a force that is “properly paid, properly resourced and properly respected”.

“Anything less than sustained and significant increase in funding that delivers the pay increase officers deserve will not touch the sides of the crisis policing faces’, he added.