Officers are leaving the force early because they are exhausted

THOUSANDS of police officers are leaving the service before their time is up because they are exhausted and burnt out, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.

2,424 officers voluntarily left forces in England and Wales prior to completing their full potential pensionable service this year. The figure is up almost 400 on the previous year.

Steve Kent, Federation Chairman, said: “People are burned out and they’re going as quickly as they can. People have done a lot of service and then with the sudden increased demand over the last five or six years has just taken its toll as people are weighing up their options.

“That is concerning for those officers, obviously going early, although I know most of them are doing it after making careful, considered decisions. This makes me worry for the cops who won’t be able to go at that time because of the new pension scheme. They’re going to be doing potentially 35 years coming up and they’re going to be absolutely exhausted by the time they get to that age. It is a concerning trend across the board.”

Forces are struggling to fill the gaps as experienced and specialist officers leave; 33 out of 43 forces said they are not recruiting enough detectives.

Steve added: “I speak to a lot of officers who have got to the age where they say ‘I’ve had enough, I can’t cope with it. I can’t still be working shifts’, and they will look at that earlier leaving. It is a shame because then financially they’re missing out on quite a lot. It’s a shame for the force because we’re losing skill sets.

“But people are struggling with the workload. It’s becoming a breaking point. We are fortunate in South Yorkshire Police that the chief found some money to recruit some new cops and we are having almost double intakes this year, but we are just filling the gaps that people are leaving so we’re not making any gains. If you’re having teams of cops where a massive percentage are young in service then losing that valuable experience is absolutely massive.”

Steve said better budgeting and improvements to pay and conditions could remedy the situation, along with better demand management systems.

He added: “If we were to up the policing budget across the country and we got those 12,000 cops back then we would have a 20-30% more cops on shift, and they would feel less under stress. They’d still be doing a stressful job but it would be shared out better and they’d feel more comfortable. So this essentially all boils down to central funding and Government attitude.”