Jane’s Police Review has called on the Home Secretary to reconsider the police priority payment scheme after the magazine received a deluge of letters from readers.
Nearly 1,000 police officers signed a petition in protest against the payment scheme, which is designed to reward “high levels of competence and commitment to duty”. The magazine has been running the campaign since the start of the year. It called for the scheme to be reviewed in an editorial on 4 April and received a reply from Blunkett, which it published, saying he had asked the Police Negotiating Board to review the system.
The title then published a letter in May, which prompted the huge response. Editor Catriona Marchant, who delivered the letters personally to the Home Secretary’s office this week, told Press Gazette: “This has been one of our main campaigns this year. So many officers are unhappy and morale is so low, the Home Office needs some time to look at the scheme more thoroughly.”
The title has issued three demands – clarification of the criteria about who gets the payment; that more officers should be entitled to it; and that it should be more clearly shown to be related to how well the job is done.
The Home Office this week confirmed that every officer who wrote in will receive a response and said it was looking at whether there was “any need” to raise the percentage as part of the review, which is due in October.
By Ruth Addicott
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