A police officer of 17 years has described having no choice but to dip into his children’s university fund to pay his family’s soaring bills, as rising anger over wages sparks an exodus from forces across England and Wales.
Officers are resigning in record numbers “simply because they cannot afford to stay in the service”, the Police Federation warned last week, after a decade in which “every element of their pay and conditions has been gradually eroded”.
Polling of 36,000 officers saw 87 per cent report that they were worse off now than five years ago – and revealed that nearly one in five plan to quit the police force within the next two years.
In testimonies since handed to The Independent, officers said they felt “massively undervalued” by the government, having suffered real-terms pay cuts of at least 25 per cent since 2010, according to the Police Federation.
“I have stopped expecting anything, any sort of pay reward for what we do … it’s been so long since we’ve felt we have been treated fairly,” said PC David Bowley.
Undermining the government’s inherited target of recruiting 20,000 new officers by March, he warned that forces’ inability to retain and recruit officers was “impacting morale”, adding: “When young officers come on to the job and see what it is really like, I am not surprised a lot of them leave.”
“I know a lot of people who have left over pay – the majority going on to be train drivers and other professions we never thought we would lose people to,” PC Bowley said, recalling that policing used to be “a career for life”.
Carrying the scars of numerous assaults he has faced in his role, PC Bowley said he had moved over to the neighbourhood team in Newcastle in part because the “risk and rewards do not balance out when you are on the front line and going to 999 jobs without adequate back up”.
The father-of-two said that despite being “in a privileged position compared to younger officers” of having been able to accrue some savings, he has “with a heavy heart” been forced to dip into his sons’ university funds to pay his family’s soaring bills.
The combined pay cuts and the cost of living crisis have “had an impact on my wellbeing”, he told the Police Federation, adding: “The plans that we had made for our children, we are having to amend.
“I am hoping that in a few years things will improve but it’s been a long time now since we have had any sort of improvement, so I am not confident.”
Calling the erosion of pay “a massive slight on officers”, he said: “I was promised a pension that I am now not going to get, we were promised adequate pay rises that we have not received for a long time. Since I started, I have also had incremental pay rise freezes. I was told it would take 10 years to go onto full pay, but it took me nearly 12 years.”
Police forfeited the right to take industrial action more than a century ago in return for a promise by the government – enshrined in law – of continuous fair pay, following a chaotic year of large-scale and at times violent strikes.
But that cornerstone of fair pay “is no longer the case”, suggested PC Bowley – echoing Police Federation chair Steve Hartshorn, who recently asked ministers whether his forebears had made “a mistake in trusting you”.
North Yorkshire traffic officer PC Dan Stoppard recalled that the “cost of living wasn’t really an issue for me” when he joined the force 18 years ago.
But he highlighted the 2011 Winsor review – which recommended cutting officers’ starting salaries and expediting pay progression – as a turning point, after which he has borne “the brunt of pay freezes, cuts and drastic changes to pensions and conditions”.
Describing bearing witness to fatal road collisions on regular basis, some involving children, being rammed while trying to stop cars and being threatened with knives, PC Stoppard said: “I don’t think the danger we face and the scrutiny we are under is reflected fairly in our pay and conditions.”
He complained of “inequality” in the current pay structure, changes to pension arrangements and the disappearances of certain bonus payments amounting to thousands of pounds.
“I’m now at the top of the pay scale as a PC but the pay increases simply do not cover rises in the cost of living. We received £1,900 this year but my gas and electric bill has shot up to £1,500.”
Dan Stoppard hit out at ‘inequality’ in the pay structure system
