Police Leaders ‘Detached From Reality’ On Retention Crisis

Police leaders who dismiss the high number of officers planning to leave the service are “detached from reality”, the Chair of South Yorkshire Police has said.

Steve Kent was speaking after Jo Noakes, interim CEO of the College of Policing, described the risk of officers leaving the service as “relatively low” in her speech at the Police Superintendents’ Association conference last month.

However, figures show that, in the past financial year, 4,751 police officers voluntarily left the police forces in England and Wales – an increase on the previous year, when 4,688 officers left. And – according to the latest Police Wellbeing Survey – three in 10 police officers and staff say they intend to leave policing within the next year.

Ms Noakes said: “The data does show that we are still a really, really low turnover sector, and that is of course because it is a vocation. I talk to officers every day who love the job, do a really good job… we just need to be really careful not to take advantage of that and all have a responsibility in that.”

Ms Noakes’ comments were echoed later in the conference by Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe, Police Reform Lead at the National Police Chiefs’ Council, who said the service had “no problem” recruiting new officers. AC Rolfe said: “Policing has no problem recruiting. Attrition is tracked clearly and tracked better than other public sectors.” While she said the service must be “alive” to the numbers of people leaving, she said it was “better than other sectors”.

Steve said: “This shows the absolute fantasy world that the College of Policing is living in. Retention is an issue that you can see across the country, including in South Yorkshire Police, and to deny that is a problem has hit badly with our officers.

“These are the organisations that are supposed to be leading policing, but they are so out of touch with what we are doing. It is a damning indictment and it’s seriously concerning that the person leading this organisation is coming out with things like this.”

He added: “I think the national Federation has to be more aggressive in holding them to account for comments like this, because it calls into question their fitness to lead those organisations – they are so detached from reality.

“I know officers in this force of all levels of service, including those with lots of experience, who are genuinely talking about leaving in their droves. I’m not saying it’s going to happen overnight, but the drip, drip, drip will start to be noticed, yet the College of Policing and HMIC and the Government aren’t acknowledging this. They need to wake up to the true state of policing.”