Tuesday 17 August 2010

Police Bonuses?

The public sector continues to be scrutinised as the spending axe threatens pay, conditions and pensions. The police service is under particular scrutiny and will undoubtedly be hit hard when the interim review on public spending reports next month.

There was an appalling article in the Telegraph the other day hitting out at police bonuses. Readers of the article, not familiar with police pay, could be forgiven for not understanding any of it, other than the overriding authors contention we are getting extra money for nothing.

By way of explanation, let me say that it was the last Government that introduced these different payments. They were not wanted by the police service in general. The Government didn't like all officers being paid the same and introduced two payments to tackle perceived poor performance and to reward front line and specialist skilled policing.

Competence Related Threshold Payments (CTRP) were introduced as part of our salary and were to be paid to around 90% of all officers that qualify. Only those officers at the top of their pay scale qualify, so it is in fact only paid to around 40% of officers The idea was that these performing got a further pay increment and those that were not, did not, and this would encourage poor performers to improve.

Special Priority Payments were introduced to reward those officers that were working on the front line or those that had specialist skills. This was the Governments attempt at introducing pay differentials for officers. The payments are made to 40% of officers and reward those working shifts, for example, and those whose skills need to be retained. The amounts can vary from around £1000 to £2500 per anum.

I understand the aims of the Government when these rewards were introduced. They are part of the police pay package and do not represent new money being paid to officers. To suggest police are getting some extra reward for doing their job is misleading. Some officers effectively got a pay rise and others did not.

The rewards that should, in my opinion, be reviewed are those paid to the Superintending Ranks. They get performance bonuses for meeting targets.  The risk here is that senior officers, who have control of significant resources, are using those resources to get their bonus. You can argue that is the idea, but if the Divisional Commander has met his anti social behaviour target for the year but is failing on burglary, he or she may decide to ignore the continuing public concern regarding anti social behaviour and focus all resources on burglary so that they get their bonus. I guess the coalition Government will decide this is another good reason to have elected police 'commisioners.'

9 comments:

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  2. Well reasoned and explained.

    I suspect the timing of the article, within hours of the secret document leak by ACPO is another of their attempts to deflect the attention away from their nefarious activities over bonuses.

    Quite agree, the scrutiny SHOULD start at the top. We said as much on our pages at the weekend.
    http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2010/08/disgraceful-acpo-betray-frontline.html

    Worth having a look at what the Essex JBB Fed chap had to say. He is well miffed with the way it has all been painted by ACPO.

    http://www.essex.polfed.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77:old-spanish-practices-or-a-stab-in-the-back-from-acpo&catid=53:chairmans-blog&Itemid=80

    Quote: "There are explanations of why we are compensated as we are for working on bank holidays or rest days, for having booked holiday with our families cancelled, for having to perform overtime without the ability to refuse. But to recap, the Police Regulations are law. By law, a police officer has to obey a lawful order – and just about anything that isn’t patently illegal is a lawful order. We have no choice whatsoever if we are ordered to stay on duty, come back to duty, work on a day off, come home from a holiday, or work on a public holiday.

    There is much more to these proposals than just the overtime rates and triggers. I don’t think many people expected special priority payments to survive the budget cuts, and the Federation is opposed to them for their divisiveness, but to attack competence related threshold payments, which are pensionable, is ridiculous. These payments are an optional add-on to the top of the salary scale. They are a way of keeping experienced officers hungry by ensuring they keep their performance at the optimum level at a time when there are no more rewards available. Our members have been paying pension contributions on that payment for seven years. If they are scrapped, can they have their money back?"

    Frontline bonuses, honestly earned and paid are a perfectly acceptable means of remuneration. Senior officers, who fiddle crime statistics, or at the very least condone the practice and then receive exhorbitant bonuses on the back of it have soured the pitch
    for the majority and now have the affrontery to deflect from their own deceitful conduct by shining the light back on the troops.

    As we said on our pages, its convenient that ACPO have a direct channel to the Home Office and media, whereas the frontline do not. And, just to make doubly sure the federation didn't get the chance to defend the rank and file, ACPO "leak" the so called "secret" document in advance. In any other sector, this sort of conduct would be the catalyst for industrial action. In the absence of that option, lets hope it's not too late for the fed to have a go.

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  3. Ooooh the sweet irony of it all . .

    http://thinbluelineuk.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-would-fake-cop-feel-so-at-home-at.html

    ReplyDelete
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  5. Police bonuses are undoubtedly of singular importance to most police brains.

    Therefor I must excuse myself straying from this most important of all topics to mention a serving woman police constable of the highest integrity. Had it not been for this brave officer, yet another miscarriage of justice would have been orchestrated - courtesy of her corrupt male colleagues.

    There will be neither praise nor compliments for her on police blogs because she is PC Rachel Webb, the courageous woman who 'dobbed in' that piece of garbage, Sgt Mark Andrews.

    As if his main deed was not bad enough, nauseating attempts to cover up his crime have emerged during his trial.

    Collusion by officer 'mates' led to perjury in the witness box and these officers did all they could to compromise the case with deceit and lies. Their evidence obliged the trial judge to refer the liars back to their own Chief Constable.

    We citizens have seen many attempts by rogue police to compromise justice and there are 'no lessons learned'. In UK courts today, police officers will lie on oath to clear themselves and defeat Justice. Our entire Judicial System has been brought into disrepute by prevalent corruption.

    In general we are no longer served by police, save for the brave 'few' and I express fears for reprisals against PC Rachel Webb. Moves may have already been devised to stain by any means, her shining 24 carat character and future career prospects.

    I merely ask of our politicians, "When will the much overdue purge of uniformed criminals and traitors, begin?"

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  6. Coming soon to a blog near you:

    IS THE TRAITOR GADGET FIT TO BE A POLICEMAN?

    ReplyDelete
  7. It's usually best to keep bonuses and targets out of pay systems. We've known for a long time they tend to demotivate, other than in peace-work systems.
    You make good points on this and the dreadful duo prepared to lie to escape speeding tickets. We should try to keep our systems as free of cronyism as we can, and this should include decisions on pay not being manipulated in such a manner. Dud employees are known to spend all their time working on image management and not the needs of the job. As with psychopaths generally, we are not good at spotting them. Payment systems will only make matters worse.

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  8. A police is always there to stop crimes from happening, to bring convicts to justice and to help people out who may need help. I guess every police should get a bonus.

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  9. MTG

    You are more prejudiced and ignorant than those you try and criticise.

    I am not going to try and defend what Mark Andrews did but from experience I can understand his frustration. Dealing with drunks is bad enough. Dealing with drunken educated men and woman can be very difficult. They do not comply with reasonable instructions. They argue about everything. They know their rights, and like you, they think they are clever. Their friend/relative/neighbour is a lawyer. They are going to sue everyone and we will all lose our jobs.

    Rachel Webb will not be bullied, sent to Coventry or anything else for reporting what she saw as innapropriate behaviour. Recruits are indoctrinated now to report anything they feel is innapropriate, especially anything that might suggest an officer is non PC.

    The result of this is that drunken violent offenders are not being dealt with on the street effectively. Officers are genuinely worried that using what they perceive as reasonable force will be seen as slightly too robust by another who turns up at the end of a violent arrest and that they will be reported. This is putting officers and the public at risk.

    Sometimes there is no alternative than to take hold of a drunk and march them off to wherever they need to go. Mark Andrews did just that. I accept, but also understand, his behaviour placing the woman in the cell was too robust. Having said that, he has now been acquitted of assault. The Force have sadly chosen to sack him. After all the PC police must be seen to be doing the right thing when a case like this has attracted the attention of left wing bigots and the media.

    ReplyDelete