- Conference
- 2012 Police & Justice Conference
- Date
- 13 June 2012
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference believes that cuts to police budgets have disproportionately fallen on police staff. Swathes of police staff across the country have been made redundant, face redundancy or privatisation.
Conference it could be argued that any progress made in the last decade in terms of equality and work life balance has been expunged by the changes introduced by police forces in response to the cuts.
Those of us left in employment face a myriad of changes through internal workforce reorganisations as well as collaborative working with neighbouring forces or police force reform in Scotland. Centralisation of departments, relocation of functions sometimes to another force area, changes to working practices, reduced budgets for reasonable adjustments, reduction in successful flexible working applications, pressure applied to change existing flexible working arrangements. The list goes on but all these changes will impact on the demographics of police staff employees. For example centralising a department may make it impractical and financially unviable for part time staff to commute, equally it could be just as impracticable for colleagues with a disability. Changes to working practices within departments such as the reduction in the number of staff working shifts or altering job descriptions and having the role re-evaluated have led to reduced salaries for many.
Conference believes that the changes made have resulted in numerous staff resigning on top of those who have been made redundant and that work place demographics may have changed.
Conference calls on the Service Group Executive to
1)Work with Police branches to collate information from each force regarding the effects on those with protected characteristics and part time staff to enable comparisons between latest figures and those pre cuts.
2) Work with Police branches to collate information from each force regarding changes to the number of successful flexible working requests.
3) Work with Police branches to collate information in relation to roles that have been subject to pay cuts..
4) Evaluate & circulate the collated information and draw attention to any group being identified as disproportionally affected.
5) If any groups are being disproportionally affected to produce guidance including any best practice to mitigate the problems and to be circulated to branches.