Despite record rises in the number of police officers the police overtime bill has gone up by a stonking 90% in the last 10 years to £400m, boosting the average officer’s salary by £3,500. Three quarters of police forces claimed these levels of overtime were due to under-staffing despite police officer numbers having risen by 20,000 in the same period.
Amazingly, one police constable in London was exposed for more than doubling his £42,000 salary to over £100,000 through overtime during 2007/2008.
In 2009 the Independent issued Freedom of Information requests to every police force, and from the 35 out of 51 that responded it was revealed that more than 12,000 police constables were supplementing their salary by over £6,000 per year through overtime and nearly 500 earned over £15,000 in overtime payments.
At the time of this investigation, the Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz said;
“My overriding concern is with the safety of allowing police officers to work such a vast amount of overtime. Police officers need to be alert and I do not believe that an officer working enough hours to warrant an almost doubling of their salary can be properly effective.”
It is hard to disagree, and I believe this kind of practise occurs in other public sector services as well, such as the NHS. For me, it stinks of the public sector fuelling its space rocket while the private sector burns. Overtime should be used not as an entitlement but as a means to reward staff that are called in at short notice.
According to the Police Minister David Hanson earlier this year;
“There is a culture that overtime is acceptable in the system and therefore it is something that has not been looked at with scrutiny in the way it should have been.”
So is this overtime genuinely awarded by overstretched police departments who desperately need staff to cover shifts? It doesn’t seem like it to me. The problem rears itself when you discover how easy it is to earn overtime as a police officer. In fact, it is possible for an officer to supplement his pay package by 4 hours overtime at time-and-a-third for simply answering one phone call while off duty.
Some forces take it further and have failed to implement an overtime policy at all. This leaves the system wide open to abuse by gold-digging officers who deliberately fail to clock off and therefore clock up more hours than they have actually worked, providing a cash bonus to which they are not entitled.
This is why the overtime bill has risen into the stratosphere.
It’s Christmas every day for a police officer, lets not beat about the bush here. They get paid far too much for the bit of tough talking, walking around the street or pointing stupid cameras at motorists that they do. But what about those officers that actually are working hard and earning genuine overtime? Should they be allowed to work 60 or 70 hour weeks?
I don’t think so, anyway. I don’t believe a police officer can be effective after working such long hours. It puts the public in danger as well as themselves, and a tired officer is more likely to be one of those bastard ones that go round winding people up and think they’re the centre of the universe.
I believe the overtime culture is also why there are declining numbers of detectives. Only constables and sergeants can accrue overtime: higher ranks cannot and for many this would mean taking a job at a higher rank rewards less pay.
Apparently it is a common tactic for police officers to stay at constable or sergeant until their twilight years in the force, at which point they seek to move up the ranks to multiply their pension. They call it “ranking up”. I call it “ripping off”.
Overtime policy should be implemented in all police forces immediately. I am quite amazed that it isn’t to be honest but given the comments from former police minister David Hanson we should not be all that shocked. Overtime should not be used as a vehicle for police officers to multiply their salaries by working hours which would render them a less effective officer. Can you imagine a police pursuit driver after a 70 hour week, pilled up on Pro Plus in a super-powerful car doing that extra overtime to pay off the mortgage he can only just afford? Is this the kind of officer we want on our streets?
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I think I met one of those on the A30 in Devon two weeks ago. I was driving at 70mph when he roared past me putting on his blues and twos just as he went past (and off again after he’d passed me). I didn’t see him coming (and I’m quite good at checking the rear view mirror) and there was no reason I could possibly have wanted to move into the outside lane as there were no turns and no other vehicles there. Made me jump out of my skin though which I think was the only desired effect. He must have been doing over 100mph and there were no accidents ahead or serious incidents reported that night. Probably didn’t want to be late back for his snacktime or something. The police are a load of tossers on the whole, not worthy of their jobs let alone their massive salaries.
Overtime in the private sector means working substantially over your contracted hours and often is only at normal pay rates and you accept it grateful to have a job at all. It’s time the public sector which is over-unionised had to match general working conditions for the salaries they get. And that only the good people are promoted (not those who’ve merely been around a long time) and that everyone deserves to be there and is doing a good job. Too often good people in the public sector are trapped at lower grades than they deserve because they are far too useful where they are and their bosses worry about what they would do without them.
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I’ve experienced that a fair bit on the motorway, the police love to rag their high powered 4×4′s because hey, who’s going to stop them? Another question, why do police need to have BMWs and Jaguars? Seems like a complete waste of money to me.
I’ve had one copper tailgate me for a bit, hammer it past without indicating, swerve in front of me and then slam his brakes on because I was going 75mph. I suppose he could have stopped me and given me a ticket but bloody hell, if I had the video equipment in my car that he had, I’d have had him suspended from duty in a heartbeat for that stunt.
Agree entirely with your second point.
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Great article Phil, I think police officers are already overpaid for what they do, they are the lowest qualified yet the highest paid frontline public sector occupation. They outearn nurses and teachers by quite a margin and it always nurses and teachers that have to suffer from cuts. Don’t get me wrong I support cuts because this ridiculous out of control deficit the new Government has inherited from Labour needs to be tackled but the police should share the pain as well. I agree completely why should they get BMWs and Jags, what’s wrong with vauxhalls and fords? I think it is also time we ended this double standards culture in the police, where they can do what they like and get away with it. I can’t count the amount of times I have been overtaken by reckless police cars doing 100mph on the M55 with NO lights or sirens and yet if you reported them even with a numberplate the force would just take their side and no action would be taken, they cover each others backs. Also another potential target for cuts should be those useless waste of money plastic PCSOs, they cost billions that could be saved and what do they really do other than stand around chatting in town?
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