THOUSANDS of police officers are receiving full pay costing up to £245 million a year for doing backroom work and part-time duties after being sick or injured.
A snapshot of 47 British forces released under freedom of information legislation shows that 8,167 officers out of more than 160,000 across Britain were on recuperative or restricted duties on one day last September.
The estimated salary bill was £665,000 for one day and across a year the cost would reach £245 million based on an average officer’s salary of £30,000 a year. The number of officers is almost equal to the total manpower of Greater Manchester Police, the second-biggest force in mainland Britain.
The survey also found that 1,250 officers out of the total were working part-time, roughly equal to a small provincial force such as Lincolnshire, Cumbria, Gwent or Wiltshire.
Under current legislation sick or injured officers can spend up to a year on recuperative duties after examination by doctors. The officers may return to work, gradually increasing the number of hours.
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If they are still not fully fit they can work but they may be put on restricted duties. Someone who has had a heart attack, for example, might be barred from driving a fast-response car or doing riot training. A traffic officer who had a back injury could be barred from motorcycle duties. The figures partly reflect how police work is becoming more dangerous with increasing numbers of injuries.
Forces have also been forced to allow more officers to remain in service because of pressures to reduce ill-health pensions. At the same time they are being pressed to cut down the days lost through sickness.
The survey showed that Suffolk had the highest proportion of officers on restrictive or recuperative duties, at 9.4 per cent, closely followed by Merseyside, at 9.3 per cent.
But there is a wide variation in the figure between forces with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Leicestershire and Northern forces recording less than 2 per cent of officers on restrictive or recuperative duties.
The Metropolitan Police had 1,655 officers drawing a full wage for non-frontline duties, which was 5.4 per cent of the manpower at the time. Eighty-four officers were working less than four hours a day, which was the highest number within any force. Greater Manchester Police, with 32, came next followed by West Midlands, with 19.
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Last year Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, called for changes in the sick pay system, arguing that thousands of officers were on the same pay as fit officers yet were working only part of the time. The figures come in addition to the 1.2 million sick days taken each year by police in England and Wales, which include 247,000 in London.
Yesterday Glen Smythe, chairman of the Metropolitan Police branch of the Police Federation, said that “restricted” duties did not fully sum up the position. He said that a classification of “skill losses” should be used for some officers.
A spokesman for the national federation said: “The extraordinary nature of the work that police officers do means that unlike other professions they are putting themselves in potentially conflicting situations on a daily basis.”
VITAL STATISTICS
160,000 police officers in Britain
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8,167 officers on recuperative or restricted duties on one day last September
1.2 million days were lost in sick leave per year
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1.3 per cent: force with the lowest percentage of officers on restricted or recuperative duties is Leicestershire
9.4 per cent: Suffolk is force with highest percentage on restricted duties