Dec 17

UNISON takes its ‘We are police staff’ campaign to Parliament

  • 17 December 2025

On Tuesday 16 December, UNISON hosted a parliamentary event in support of police staff. The event was timed in advance of a police reform white paper expected in the new year.

Members from 25 UNISON police branches joined the lobby and police minister Sarah Jones MP was in attendance).

Chair of the union’s policing, probation and CAFCASS service group Debi Potter (pictured above, left, with Sarah Jones) spoke at the event. Four police staff members also gave speeches and UNISON assistant general secretary Jon Richards laid out the union’s political asks on policing.

“Police staff make up 40% of the police workforce. They work alongside police officers but are not widely appreciated or understood,” he said.

Mr Richards (pictured below) said that UNISON supports the government’s manifesto commitment to revitalise neighbourhood policing, but warned that this pledge risks being undermined if police forces spend all of their budgets on employing new officers and not police community support officers (PCSOs).

UNISON assistant general secretary Jon Richards delivers a speech next to a banner that reads 'We are police staff: UNISON's campaign to promote and defend police staff'

Jon Richards delivers his speech at the event. Credit: Jess Hurd.

“Back in 2010, when Labour was last in power, there were nearly 17,000 PCSOs on the beat,” he said. “Today there are just 7,300. That’s nearly a 60% fall in numbers. It’s the result of austerity, but their numbers continue to fall.”

Part of the reason for this is police officer uplift targets, set up by Boris Johnson in 2019, which require police forces to maintain their police officer numbers at pre-determined levels set by the Home Office. Failure to hit these officer numbers leads to financial penalties on forces.

The impact of the uplift, when combined with budget deficits, is that police officers are used to backfill vacant, or redundant, police staff roles at much higher cost to the public purse.

The National Police Chiefs Council estimated that there were 6,000 police officers doing police staff jobs in 2024.

Police forces in England and Wales face a combined budget deficit of nearly £1 billion by 2027.

UNISON’s three demands of the government are:

  1. An end to police uplift targets for officer numbers
  2. To reverse the cuts to PCSOs
  3. A strategic vision for the police workforce

Find out more about the union’s ‘We are police staff’ campaign

 

 

 

 

The post UNISON takes its ‘We are police staff’ campaign to Parliament appeared first on UNISON National.