On Monday 9 June UNISON members from the union’s police, probation and Cafcass service group met with the policing minister Dame Diana Johnson (pictured fifth from left above). Union representatives from across England and Wales attended.
The purpose of the visit was for the union to make the case for more funding for police services. After a long period of austerity under the Conservative government, police staff budgets have been slashed.
Police staff are different to police officers. They fulfil specialist roles including PCSOs, crime scene investigators, call handlers, dispatch controllers and crime analysts.
In the meeting, UNISON asked for the government to end the centrally-dictated police officer number targets that have led to police officers taking over specialist staff roles. This means that, in many local police forces, specialist staff jobs have been lost entirely. It also means that there are fewer police officers on the streets, because they’re busy filling back-room roles.
The delegation also gave the policing minster UNISON’s research on the scales of budget shortfalls in England and Wales police forces and details of specialist staff jobs being lost in local forces.
Forces in England and Wales are predicting their collective shortfall will reach just under £1billion by 2027. The size of shortfalls varies. The Met Police is the worst affected (£393m), followed by Essex (£39m) and Avon & Somerset (£35m).
UNISON Chair of the police staff sector committee for England and Wales Debi Potter said, “I’m really proud of the articulate and powerful arguments put forward by the regional delegates. They really painted a clear picture of how inadequate funding and police officer headcount targets are damaging policing in their regions.
“We hope our clear arguments about the perverse effects of police officer targets will influence change in the future.”
Rob Birch, from the West Midlands said “It was great to meet the policing minister face to face and be able to explain the importance of police staff. The emphasis on police officer numbers misses the point. Police staff are policing too, and we have skills and experience in our specialist roles that police officers won’t have. We need to invest in staff in order to build the kind of more effective, more productive, police service that the government want.”
The article UNISON representatives meet policing minister first appeared on the UNISON National site.
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