- Conference
- 2025 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 13 February 2025
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes the vital work which UNISON’s police staff members undertake for police forces in England, Scotland and Wales. Police staff work alongside police officers to solve crime, catch criminals and keep us from harm. They are not police officers, do not have powers of arrest and cannot carry firearms, but can be awarded most of the powers of their officer colleagues. Police staff perform many operational, operational support and organisational support functions. Our police staff members long ago rejected the derogatory name of ‘civilian staff’.
Conference understands that the roles carried out by our police staff members, like many jobs in the public sector, are poorly understood and therefore under appreciated by the public, politicians and the media. The first voice you will hear if you call the police in an emergency will be a member of police staff working as a call-taker in a police control room. That call taker will assess the emergency and pass details to a police staff dispatcher who sends police officers. A police staff scenes of crime officer will then visit the scene to gather forensic evidence to help identify any perpetrator. Digital forensic staff will comb through phone and other records to help catch those responsible. A file preparation clerk will put the papers together to go to the Crown Prosecution Service. A witness protection officer will help victims and their families through the court process. There are literally hundreds of other specialist police staff roles, like these, involved in keeping our communities safe. 60 percent of police staff are women and bring a very important gender balance to policing, given that the officer workforce is predominantly male.
Police community support officers are also police staff and proud UNISON members. PCSOs were the backbone of neighbourhood policing under the previous Labour Government. They reconnected police forces to their communities in a way that police officers were unable to do. The community focus of PCSOs encouraged a far higher proportion of Black applicants to join the police service. But years of Tory cuts between 2010 and 2024 have seen the PCSO workforce cut by 55 percent.
Conference further notes that by 2019, Tory police cuts had left the Conservatives’ reputation as the party of law and order in tatters. Boris Johnson tried to repair this reputation by promising to recruit 20,000 police officers to replace those cut previously by his own government. Police force budget deficits mean that 6,000 of these officers now sit in police staff jobs, as police forces hold staff vacancies open to manage their deficits.
Conference welcomes UNISON’s ‘We Are Police Staff’ Campaign which seeks to raise the profile of our police staff members and to educate the public, politicians and media on the vital work that our members carry out to keep communities safe.
UNISON has a long history of challenging misogyny, sexism, racism and homophobia in the police service. Policing is no different to other parts of the public sector in these respects; many other public bodies having accepted that their internal culture requires serious reform. UNISON’s police staff members and police branches are part of the solution to re-setting police culture. UNISON’s self organised groups are strongly organised in policing and are part of the vital process of creating a police service which is more representative and more respectful of the communities it serves.
Conference therefore calls upon the National Executive Council to:
1)Support UNISON’s ‘We Are Police Staff’ Campaign;
2)Raise awareness of UNISON police staff members’ work and vocation;
3)Champion the work of police staff in UNISON’s internal and external media;
4)Work via the Labour Link and Campaign Fund to give MPs, MSPs, Senedd members and local politicians a much better understanding of the work of police staff;
5)Promote respect for our police staff members in UNISON.