The Research team conducted a survey of pay and morale during February 2014, the response to this was tremendous. That alone suggests how important pay and conditions are to our members. Below is a short file with some headline statistics based on the sample as a whole. However, I'm sure many of you will be interested in breakdowns by region and rank, and in more detailed analysis. Rather than publish all the data at once, the team intend to publish a series of short reports over the coming months.
Key Statistics
- The effect of low morale is that 50 per cent say they won’t stay in the service until they can retire, and that 5,000 will leave in the next two years, which means less a service to the public.
- Loss of expertise and skills and other officers having to take on more.
- The poll, which surveyed the views of 32,606 serving officers, also found that just over half (51.1 per cent) said they intended to remain in the police until pension age and 71.2 per cent said they would not recommend to other people that they joined the police.
- A total of 94 per cent of officers who responded also stated they believed morale was either low or very low in the police service; this compares to just 62 per cent of armed service personnel who, when asked the same questions in 2013, gave the same answer. Nearly two thirds – 59 per cent – stated their own personal morale was low, compared with 28 per cent of those in the armed forces survey.
- The survey was commissioned to look at the state of police morale, in part following cuts to officers’ pay packages and to the police pension.
- A total of 91 per cent said changes to overtime and rest day payments had affected their morale while 87.2 per cent said that increases to the age at which they can claim their pension had had an impact on their morale.
- The results will form part of the Police Federation of England and Wales’s submission to the pay review body.
