Date scheduled for police officer redundancy hearing

THE Police Arbitration Tribunal hearing on police officer redundancy has been scheduled for Friday November 15.

Both the Staff and Official sides of the PNB will have the chance to make their respective cases over the controversial issue to Arbiters at the hearing. Once they have made their views known, Home Secretary Theresa May will then have the final decision.

Mrs May refused to comment on compulsory severance during a question-and-answer session after her speech at the Superintendents’ Association conference this week, saying she would make her decision on whether to ratify the PAT’s decision when it was made.

It was described as a “sad day” for policing in England and Wales as the Police Negotiating Board registered a “failure to agree” over compulsory severance on July 24.

Ian Rennie, PFEW General Secretary and Staff Side secretary at PNB, said that while the Staff Side of the PNB has “grave doubts” about the proposals for compulsory severance it has attempted to engage in constructive discussions with the Official Side.

However, Mr Rennie said: “Where the Official Side did provide responses, these did not provide the reassurances Staff Side was seeking. The responses of the Official Side, both written and oral, have only further reinforced Staff Side’s view that, in addition to being wrong in principle, compulsory severance cannot be implemented in practice for police officers.”

Also speaking at the Superintendents’ Association Annual conference this week, Irene Curtis, association president, described compulsory severance as a “game changer in policing.”

Mrs Curtis said the threat of compulsory severance could give officers the perception that their behaviour will influence whether they keep their job, even if this is not the case.

She added: “People ask why should the police be treated any different from the rest of the country in terms of being made redundant?  My answer to that is because we are different, we swear an oath to the monarch that gives us the status of the office of constable. 

“We are provided with powers to detain somebody, to remove their liberty, to use force on people, very important powers, but those powers are given to us on a condition that we act independently and without fear or favour.  We should be totally protected from any undue influence.”

An ACPO spokeswoman said chief constables “recognised the strength of feeling among police officers about compulsory severance and the issues of detail still to be resolved, which include the principle of compulsory severance for police officers itself.”

However they took the view “that beyond 2016 there are likely to be further significant funding cuts and therefore, very reluctantly, forces in the future would need to have this means of reducing expenditure at their disposal.”

She added that the use of compulsory severance would be a “matter of extreme last resort.”

Speaking in the summer, a Home Office spokesman said it would be “inappropriate to comment while negotiations are ongoing”.