Police could face annual fitness tests and compulsory redundancies
Baku, March 16 (AZERTAC). Recommendations form second stage of review of police pay and conditions for the home secretary.
The most radical shakeup of policing for more than 30 years could end a ban on compulsory redundancies and introduce annual fitness tests for officers - with pay cuts for those who fail.
As well as challenging the police's "job for life" culture, it would open the way for recruits with business and military backgrounds to join senior ranks without having to start as a constable on the beat.
The recommendations form the second stage of an 18-month comprehensive review of police pay and conditions by the former rail regulator Tom Winsor, ordered by the home secretary, Theresa May.
Winsor said he wants to end the "blue collar" mindset that policing is an intellectually undemanding job similar to those of skilled manual workers who clock in and out. Unveiling his findings, he said: "We want the brightest and best to think of a police career on a par with the professions of the law and medicine."
Winsor acknowledged the working-class roots of policing but complained that the "attitudes of some police officers remain fastened in that mindset" when the skills and attitudes required "are distinctly above those of factory workers".
His recommendations claim to - alongside reforms of pay and working condition proposed in the review's first stage - deliver more than £1.9bn of savings over five years on the annual police pay bill.
The report suggested cutting the starting salary for a constable from the current £23,500 to £19,000, or £21,000 for those with appropriate experience such as having been a police support officer or special constable.
Winsor said the annual fitness test was needed from next September because 65% of Metropolitan police officers and staff were either overweight or obese. The fitness levels of men in the police are far worse than women officers, with 75% of Met male officers and staff with body mass indexes higher than 25 - nine points more than the general population. Women police officers have much higher than average fitness levels.
Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, reacted strongly to the proposals, saying that without needing to turn a page of the 1,000-page report he knew that police officers believed they were under a deliberate, sustained attack from the government.
But the Association of Chief Police Officers said it was time to reward individual talent and expertise and move away from pay being solely determined by rank and length of service.
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