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Police Staff
RESPONSE TO INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF POLICE OFFICERS’ AND
STAFF REMUNERATION AND CONDITIONS
PART 2
1 Introduction
UNISON welcomes the opportunity to make this formal submission to the call for
evidence for Part 2 of the Independent Review of Police Officers’ and Staff
Remuneration and Conditions. Our response is based on the results of consultation
with our members and police branches.
Like many other respondents who contributed submissions to Part 1 of the Review, our
Part 1 response contained many of the issues and much of the evidence that we now
seek to marshal for Part 2. On page 10 of the call for evidence for Part 2, the Review
Team has acknowledged the likelihood of this scenario arising and has indicated that it
will refer back to those previous submissions where necessary. In this response we will
either provide reference back to our Part 1 submission, or where necessary, reiterate
sections of our Part 1 response. However, we make the point early in this paper that
our Part 1 submission was in effect a considered response to the Independent Review
in its totality and we would like it to be treated as such by the Review Team when
deliberating on Part 2.
UNISON reiterates here our strategic overview of the importance of the Independent
Review. Police staff pay and reward, and the negotiating machinery that supports it,
has suffered from a long term Cinderella status when compared with police officers’ pay
and the Police Negotiating Board. The result of this is that police staff pay and
conditions have not kept pace with the momentous changes which have taken place in
the police workforce over the last ten years.
Our members, and we as the trade union representing them, are open to the possibility
of significant change arising from this Independent Review. We see it as the
opportunity to rectify a whole series of fundamental problems around fairness, equity
and equality in the police staff pay and conditions package. But we reiterate our
strongly held opinion that this opportunity for change will only be realised by all
stakeholders working together to deliver a consensus outcome. The delivery of Agenda
for Change in the Health Service was only possible because consensus was achieved
both prior to and during the long and complex negotiations. It remains to be seen
whether the Police Service and Government has the maturity to deliver this consensus
in order to facilitate the implementation of recommendations coming out of this Review.
We recommend that the Review Team gives time and attention to this issue. A final
report which falls on stony ground will negate all the hard work which stakeholders have
put into their respective submissions.
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As we made clear in our supplementary submission to Part 1 of the Review, covering in
particular our analysis of the ACPO and APA submissions to Part 1, there is a welcome
degree of agreement between UNISON and these employer bodies over some of the
key issues at stake in this Review. We will reprise these items later in this response.
2 Synopsis
This submission is split into the following sections:
Executive Summary
Police Staff Pay and Reward: the current position
Police Staff Pay and Reward: the case for a national pay and grading system
UNISON’s Vision and other Stakeholders
Response to Call for Evidence Questions
Conclusion
IDS Research Paper: Regional Pay
Appendices
3 Executive Summary
3.1 The Independent Review should focus on a coherence agenda for police staff
pay and reward to:
Combat the fragmentation and discrimination inherent in current police staff
pay systems
Drive out the unnecessary costs to the public purse of duplicating police staff
pay systems 43 different ways
Deliver equal pay
Focus pay and reward on skills
3.2 The challenges facing the police service which will impact on the pay and reward
for police staff include:
Cuts will mean less police staff and those staff remaining being asked to do
different things
The cuts agenda will not lessen the need for forces to be able to recruit the
brightest and best candidates to perform the vital work carried out by police
staff
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Cuts will call into question the value to the public purse of maintaining
expensive force level pay systems
Collaboration and joint working between forces will necessitate more
commonality between the pay rates of police staff doing the same or similar
jobs
The advent of Police and Crime Commissioners threatens the integrity of the
police staff workforce and therefore the delivery of the Review’s ‘one police
service’ principle
The enthusiasm of the Government and some forces/police authorities for
outsourcing police staff functions further threatens the integrity of the police
staff workforce and the deliverability of the Review’s recommendations
The failure of the Government to support the concept of a ‘strategic
employment framework’ for policing threatens to undermine the ‘one police
service’ principle upon which the Review Team aims to build its
recommendations for medium/long term changes to police pay and reward
Police staff are now carrying out a wide range of roles which were previously
the sole province of police officers. If these responsibilities are not recognised
in their pay and conditions package it will undermine the ability of forces to
recruit and retain quality staff, and entrench the two-tier nature of the current
workforce
3.3 UNISON proposes that all police staff in England and Wales should be paid
within a national pay and grading scheme, rather than the force level grading
schemes which are currently in existence. Such a scheme could form part of a
new negotiated settlement on police staff pay and reward, allowing all parties to
bring their particular interests to the table.
3.4 A national pay and grading scheme should apply to all police staff, including the
most senior police staff.
3.5 A national pay and grading settlement would deliver the following benefits to the
police service and to police staff:
Equal pay outcomes
Economies of scale in HR/industrial relations expenditure
The opportunity to link pay with skills/competencies
The potential to negotiate a new settlement on terms and conditions
The potential to use a national pay and grading deal for police staff to stage a
move to a harmonised pay and conditions package for the whole police
workforce
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3.6 UNISON is open to the possibility of harmonising key elements of the pay and
reward package of police staff and police officers, and is willing to enter
discussions to scope the pros and cons of such harmonisation.
3.7 Police staff are working flexibly and are open to change and modernisation, but
are being held back by old-fashioned notions of status, discrimination and
unequal pay. UNISON asks the Independent Review to address these barriers
in coming to the conclusion of its Part 2 Report.
3.8 Work to address gender pay inequality must be mainstreamed into the work of
the Independent Review, and the Government must take a lead in providing the
necessary support and resources to allow the legacy of historic pay inequality to
be rectified.
3.9 £7.60/hour should become the baseline for police staff pay to address the
decency agenda for workers in the police service.
3.10 The Government’s stated policy on public sector pay should be reflected in the
Independent Review’s findings, particularly in the context of ensuring that low
paid workers in the police service are adequately rewarded at a time of public
sector austerity.
3.11 Police staff are subject to a similar, if not identical, range of constraints on their
and their families’ private lives as officers, and this ‘x-factor’ should form part of
their remuneration package.
3.12 There is little evidence that regional pay forms a major part of reward packages
either in the public or private sectors, and, where it does exist, it has little real
impact over and above the existing regional allowance systems already in place
in most employment contexts.
3.13 UNISON is totally opposed to the concept or practice of performance related pay
which, research shows, is neither productive, nor suited to the vocational culture
of the police service.
3.14 We are willing to look at the possibility of a link between skills/competence and
pay in the context of a skills framework for our members.
3.15 Role based pay is job evaluation by another name and is supported by UNISON
as the only way to ensure an equality proofed outcome to pay systems, either at
force level, or in our preferred model – a national pay and grading system for all
police staff in England and Wales.
3.16 The current overtime system for police staff is simple and should not change.
3.17 The existing pay negotiating machinery for police staff in England and Wales is
fragmented and should be regularised in a single negotiating body for all staff in
all forces. Until, or unless, this happens the conditions necessary to implement
the outcome of the Independent Review will be hampered by the unwillingness
of those forces currently outside the machinery to play their part in a strategic
and coherent outcome. We encourage the Review Team to look in particular
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into this potential barrier to implementation.
4 Police Staff Pay and Reward: the Current Position
In this section we refer the Review Team back to our Part 1 submission, particularly
pages 3 -22. In this part of our previous submission we were at pains to point out to the
Review Team the current fragmentary and discriminatory nature of police staff pay and
reward in England and Wales.
In coming to your recommendations for Part 2 of the Independent Review we hope that
the Review Team will give the necessary attention to the issues we have raised in
relation to the unsatisfactory nature of current pay and conditions for police staff in
England and Wales. UNISON agrees very much with the first principle to which the
Review Team is working, namely that: ‘Fairness is an essential part of any new system
of pay and conditions.’ In the absence of any explicit reference to the need to deliver
an equalities agenda in your principles, we have to assume that this dimension is
incorporated into your ‘Fairness’ principle.
In summary, in our Part 1 submission we pointed out the following:
Since the election there has been a worrying lack of Government support for
workforce modernisation in forces in England and Wales. This now has the knock-
on effect of removing from the terms of reference for the Independent Review the
need to dovetail your recommendations on the future of pay and reward into any
form of strategic employment framework relating to modernising the workforce and
the work done respectively by staff and officers.
There is a significant gender pay gap in the police staff workforce, with women
earning on average 8% less than their male counterparts. Women are also
segregated in the bottom half of force pay structures.
There is a decency agenda for police staff pay which should acknowledge that, on
the whole, police staff are relatively modestly paid for the work they do and that a
living wage of £7.60/hour is a reasonable baseline for the Police Staff Council pay
spine.
It is also important the Government sees to it that its commitment to pay any public
sector worker earning under £21,000 a flat rate pay rise of £250 in the pay years
2011 and 2012 is honoured by the police employers.
Police forces have a poor record of undertaking competent, equality-proofed job
evaluation and pay and grading reviews which leads us to believe that many force
pay systems are likely to be discriminatory
Regional pay for police staff is already a reality, but not one that bears any scrutiny
from the point of view of consistency, transparency or value for money to the public
purse. We attach our 2010 findings on comparative salary levels for police staff
posts again at Appendix A for illustrative purposes.
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Comparative annual leave figures for police staff across different forces display a
similar lack of coherence to rates of pay for the same jobs
The practice of forces in giving senior police staff more annual leave, in many
cases, than their more junior colleagues is deeply suspect from an equalities angle.
Police staff are currently denied the same south east weighting as police officers
which cannot be justified by any evidence that the forces concerned have
compensated their police staff by raising base pay as an alternative strategy.
5 Police Staff Pay and Reward: the Case for a National Pay and Grading
System
UNISON is calling on the Review Team to seriously consider the benefits to the police
service of a national pay and grading system for police staff. The reality of our
negotiating position is that any proposals from the Review Team, or other stakeholders,
to make significant changes to the current pay and conditions package for police staff
will only get on a joint agenda in the context of consideration of a national pay and
grading system for police staff.
UNISON is promoting a national pay and grading system because:
Police workforce modernisation points in the direction of a more coherent, nationally
led approach to police staff pay
A national approach to police staff pay and grading would provide the Police Staff
Council with the tools to address major policy and negotiating issues in a consistent
way across all forces at a time of financial restraint and continuing workforce
modernisation
Collaborating or merging police forces will need new pay arrangements to
harmonise the pay systems of precursor forces
The revised Police Staff Council 13 factor JE scheme provides a jointly agreed
method of assessing the weight of police staff jobs in a way that commands the
confidence of unions, employers and police staff. UNISON believes that the revised
scheme provides a suitable platform on which to build a single national pay and
grading system. The adoption of the 13 factor scheme by forces was a
recommendation of the 2004 HMIC Workforce Modernisation Thematic1
All the evidence from surveys of force pay and grading systems, which we
presented in our first submission to the Review, shows that a few forces have never
done any job evaluation exercise, to equality proof their pay and grading structures,
and over a third have not carried out a job evaluation exercise covering all staff at a
single point in time. (See ‘Police Staff Council Joint Survey of Job Evaluation and
Equal Pay – June 2010). There is therefore a very big question mark over the ability
of forces to defend their pay and grading schemes from an equality angle. This will
only be resolved via a national pay and grading scheme, because forces have
1
“Modernising the Police Service” HMIC 2004 p.108 (6.42)
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shown little interest in addressing the equality issues affecting their local pay
schemes of their own volition.
The link which the employers have previously said they wish to establish between
pay and skills could be delivered far more effectively and successfully in the context
of a single national grading system. UNISON is prepared to enter into constructive
talks on the above link, on the understanding that it takes shape in the context of a
national grading system.
The cost to the public purse of sustaining 43 different pay and grading systems in a
service which is striving for efficiency and effectiveness is unsustainable. At present
13 forces pay the same firm of management consultants 13 times over for the same
job evaluation scheme and same market pay data. The Police Staff Council JE
scheme is free to forces and comes with significant technical back-up.
Existing police staff grading systems have their origins in an historic local
government settlement. These pay systems are neither modern, nor forward
looking. They are blunt instruments for delivering workforce modernisation, or
efficiency and effectiveness.
The 2004 HMIC Thematic into Workforce Modernisation noted that: “… the
differences in pay suggested by this survey raise a number of issues about the need
for greater standardisation of pay across the county” 2.
In summary, the Independent Review presents an unmissable opportunity to develop a
coherent, workforce modernisation driven approach to police staff pay and reward.
5.1 Workforce Modernisation and Pay
In the conclusion to its 2004 submission to the Police Staff Council Pay and Reward
Review, the Police Staff Council Trade Union Side set out the following vision for linking
pay and police reform:
“For the Police Staff Council, this Pay and Reward Review represents a strategic
opportunity to align police staff pay and conditions with the current police reform
process. It is perhaps a once in 10 or 15 year opportunity, and we need to be bold in
seizing it.”
The vision that we articulated had five main objectives:
improving police performance
aligning pay and conditions with police reform targets
removing pay discrimination
creating a level playing field in police staff pay and conditions
incentivising the workforce
2
“Modernising the Police Service” HMIC 2004 p.107 (6.41)
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If we get the job done right, these objectives should link together in a virtuous circle that
creates the right environment for the police service to deliver on the public’s high
expectations.”
In ‘Policing the 21st Century’, the Government put on record its commitment to:
a national framework for efficient local policing
ensuring that there ‘…are some things that need to be done just once, nationally.’
Making sure that ‘…the entire police workforce is more available than currently and
more productive’.
What is clear to UNISON is that the Government’s ambitions for a more efficient use of
resources, and the workforce demand for a new approach to pay systems in the police
service, could be most effectively woven together in a Police Staff Council national pay
and grading structure that would:
reflect the business needs of a reforming police service
link pay to occupational standards and the Integrated Competency Framework
mainstream PDR in the reward structure
provide a platform for assessing the relativities between police staff and police
officer pay
ensure a diverse workforce by rooting out pay discrimination, whether relating to
gender, race, age or disability
attract and retain the brightest talents for the police staff workforce
enable staff to move flexibly both vertically and laterally within the workforce
open up the potential for reform of the wider terms and conditions package
5.2 PCSOs and the Case for a National Grading system
In 2005, Accenture was asked by the Home Office to assess whether locally-set PCSO
pay and conditions were ‘fit-for-purpose’ for the major expansion in PCSO numbers.
Accenture was asked to consider the case for a national framework of terms and
conditions.
What Accenture found was that:
the variation in PCSO pay and conditions across forces could not be explained by
differences in market factors, or role or powers (i.e. job weight) 3
3
“Study of Terms and Conditions for Police Community Support Officers” (Police Human Resources Unit/Home
Office) Accenture 2005 p 29 and pp 73 - 74
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the highest total reward provided to PCSOs exceeded the lowest by 70% or nearly
£12,0004
Accenture did not recommend a stand-alone national pay grade for PCSOs because
they recognised the impossibility of creating a national pay grade for PCSOs whilst
leaving all other police staff on locally determined salary structures. Accenture argued
instead that any changes to PCSO terms and conditions should be made as part of a
coherent programme of pay and conditions reform for all police employees and one that
aligns with the workforce modernisation/WFM/vision.5
UNISON endorses the above Accenture recommendations and believes that they
support the concept of a national pay and grading structure set out in this submission.
With its national role profile, standard powers, national recruitment and training
package, the PCSO role demands a national pay grade. With the development of
similar ICF-driven role profiles for other key police staff jobs, the case for a national pay
and grading system is considerably strengthened.
5.3 Skills, Performance and Pay
The Employers’ Side of the Police Staff Council has previously indicated that it wished
to align pay and development systems in order to reward and incentivise the workforce
to acquire and use professional skills. UNISON is prepared to explore these links in the
context of a national pay and grading system.
UNISON is totally opposed to the concept and practice of performance related pay.
Policing relies on a strong teamwork ethic and the idea that individuals should be
singled out for particular reward fails to recognise this most basic of facts about the
Service. In addition, there is no evidence whatsoever that performance related pay
actually works.
5.4 Equal Pay
UNISON believes strongly that a national pay and grading structure can provide the
necessary guarantee that police staff pay is free from gender discrimination and bias.
The work that the PSC has already undertaken in the review of the Police Staff Council
13 factor JE scheme has produced a modern, fit-for-purpose, equality proofed means of
measuring job weight.
The revised 13 factor scheme provides the consistent basis for the design of a national
pay and grading scheme. Such a national pay structure would not only encompass
basic pay, in the form of nationally agreed pay grades, but also deal fairly and
transparently with the other major components of police staff reward e.g.
location allowances
4
“Study of Terms and Conditions for Police Community Support Officers” (Police Human Resources Unit/Home
Office) Accenture 2005 p 40
5
“Study of Terms and Conditions for Police Community Support Officers” (Police Human Resources Unit/Home
Office) Accenture 2005 p 52
9
market premia
premium pay
link to skills and competence
The design of a national pay structure would provide the Police Staff Council with the
opportunity to mainstream equalities in the pay system from the outset.
The advantages of our approach for individual forces and staff would be as follows:
a jointly agreed, equality proofed pay and grading system pay system expertly
linked to the Police Staff Council 13 factor JE scheme
dispenses with the need for local pay modelling on the back of JE
major saving in time and design costs for forces
provides protection against future equal pay challenge
enables forces to build a link between pay and skills to produce a more productive
and available workforce
It is important that any national solution to police staff pay applies to all police staff,
including the most senior/ACPO-level police staff. It would be totally unacceptable from
an equality and transparency perspective to perpetuate a system in which senior police
staff salaries are set without any reference to the force job evaluation schemes
covering the majority of police staff. The current situation, which has developed on an
ad hoc basis, is that senior police staff, in many cases, reserve the right to negotiate
personal-to-holder employment contracts with forces that are subsequently not open to
scrutiny by the majority of the workforce.
There is absolutely no reason that senior police staff posts cannot be run through a
national JE scheme applying to all police staff, indeed the PSC 13 Factor JE scheme is
designed to accommodate all levels of police staff. We call upon the Review Team to
reflect on the issue of senior police staff pay and reward in its recommendations.
5.5 Efficiency and Effectiveness
The Police Staff Council is currently engaged in a major Pay and Reward Review.
Financial considerations are inevitably impacting upon the Review.
We therefore have the opportunity to take a strategic look at police staff pay in the
round. UNISON firmly believes that collaborations/merger and workforce
modernisation point us towards a more coherent and nationally consistent approach to
police staff pay and reward.
If we want efficiency, not fragmentation; if we want fairness not inequality and if we
want a set of tools to align pay with workforce modernisation, skills and workforce
productivity, UNISON submits that the Police Staff Council initiates work to develop a
national pay and grading system for all police staff in England and Wales.
10
5.6 National Pay and Grading Systems: Two Models
The models which we rely upon in making the case for a national pay and grading
system for all police staff in England and Wales are primarily:
NHS ‘Agenda for Change’
Probation Service: 2006 Pay Reform Package
5.6.1 NHS Agenda for Change
The NHS Agenda for Change programme introduced a totally modernised NHS pay
system with effect from 2004. It put all staff on a new national grading scheme on the
basis of job weight measured by a new NHS job evaluation (JE) system. Previously,
staff grading was set by each individual NHS employer locally.
Importantly, the JE scheme measured not only the knowledge and skills required to do
each job and the responsibilities involved, but also the physical, mental and emotional
effort required and any extra demands imposed by the working environment. We
mention these factors in particular, because the vast majority of police forces in
England and Wales currently employ JE schemes which ignore physical, mental and
emotional effort and working conditions. In UNISON’s view, these existing force
schemes are therefore seriously deficient. We hope that the Review Team reflect on
this issue when coming to a view on the role of JE in ushering in any pay reforms for
the police workforce as a whole. Unless a JE scheme measures the factors which are
important to the work of the police service, it will not command the support of the
workforce or its trade unions. It would be difficult to deny that physical and emotional
effort and working conditions are important factors in the delivery of policing, but most
forces do deny this by their current choice of JE scheme. The only way to ensure that a
pay system supports the principles of equal pay for work of equal value is via an
equality proofed JE scheme.
Following the job evaluation process, or job matching of the majority of NHS staff to
generic job profiles, all NHS staff were placed on one of 8 common pay bands. Pay
progression is governed by an assessment of knowledge and skills at two points in
every pay band, known as ‘gateways’. A new framework governing pay in high cost
areas, recruitment and retention premia, hours of work, payments for working outside
normal hours and on-call were added to the new grading system to form a single
package which was put to an NHS staff ballot for acceptance. Where basic pay, prior
to Agenda for Change, for a member of staff was between the minimum and maximum
of the new pay band, he or she assimilated onto the nearest pay point to his/her pre-
existing salary. It his/her salary was below the new pay band minima, he or she moved
directly to that new minima, unless their pay was significantly below the minima, in
which case some temporary transitional pay points were created to bridge the gap. A
more detailed description of Agenda for Change can be found at Appendix B.
11
5.6.2 Probation Service Pay Reform Package 2006
The Probation Service national pay reform package was introduced in April 2006 and
followed NHS Agenda for Change principles in many respects. As with NHS
employees, probation staff had previously been paid on local grading schemes. In 2005
all probation jobs were run through a national job evaluation scheme, based on the
local government national joint council JE scheme, adapted for use in the Probation
Service. As with Agenda for Change, the majority of probation jobs were matched to
national job profiles (eg. probation officer, probation services officer, case
administrators) with only a small minority requiring full individual evaluation. This saved
considerably on implementation costs and time.
Once the matching/evaluations had taken place, all jobs were placed on one of six new
pay bands on the same assimilation principles that applied to Agenda for Change.
Similar provisions were negotiated to deal with hours of work, unsocial hours and high
cost areas in as applied to Agenda for Change. More details of the Probation pay deal
are attached at Appendix C.
Both Agenda for Change and the Probation Pay Deal have been a success. They
have:
delivered an equality proof pay and grading system where there was none
provided a demonstrably fair and transparent basis for remuneration
brought simplicity to a previously confused and confusing set of pay arrangements
allowed a link between pay and competence/skills
improved staff morale and thereby performance and loyalty
given stakeholders a set of tools and a framework to make future decisions about
pay at a strategic level
These objectives are all part of UNISON’s vision for a national pay and grading scheme
for police staff in England and Wales.
6 UNISON’s Vision and Other Stakeholders
UNISON was pleased to discover a high degree of correspondence between elements
of our vision for the future of police staff pay and reward and those views expressed by
ACPO and the APA in their respective responses to the initial call for evidence from the
Review Team. We were invited to reflect on these correspondences by the Review
Team and subsequently submitted a supplementary response to the Review
commenting specifically on the ACPO and APA submissions. We reproduce part of
that supplementary response here. We believe that it is important to focus on the
issues which bring key parties together rather than those which necessarily divide us.
UNISON can find much to agree with in the ACPO and APA submissions to the
Review. Collectively the two responses show a willingness to engage in substantive
and progressive change to the way in which the police service pays and rewards its
12
workforce. We set out below where we agree, where we disagree and where we could
usefully engage in further discussion with ACPO and APA on the future of pay and
reward in the police service.
6.1 ACPO Response
6.1.1 Where UNISON and ACPO agree:
UNISON agrees with the following principles set out in the following chapters of the
ACPO submission.
Chp. 2 Guiding Principles
The current reward packages are not fit for purpose and represent a significant
missed opportunity to motivate our workforce
Continuous professional development linked to reward
Remuneration based on qualification, skill, role and achievement
Shift allowance only for shift workers
Overtime compensation for actual hours worked
Recognise the unpredictable and predictable nature of policing
Ensure consistency and justify differentiation
Chp. 4 Deployment
Within the police service nationally, for all one may expect a level of consistency in
roles, something of the order of 35,000 job descriptions actually exist.
Consideration should be given to the standardisation of PCSO powers
Chp. 5 Performance/ Post Related Pay
PRP is at odds with the vocational nature of policing
Other than in the short term, the Service should not retain post related pay for police
staff
South East allowances are essential recruitment and retention tools
There should be the retention of a national pay framework for police staff and all
posts should be governed by objective job evaluation schemes
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Chp. 6 Pay Progression and Length of Service
Bonuses are a sensitive and contentious issue
With long pay scales there is the potential challenge on grounds of age
discrimination and claims for equal pay for work of equal value
Chp. 7 Exit Routes and Pensions
Police staff are being disproportionately affected by redundancies arising specifically
out of the CSR
There should be a review of Regulation A19 to provide a more agile mechanism to
control police officer establishment
6.1.2 Where UNISON and ACPO do not agree:
Chp. 4 Deployment
Consideration should be given to extending the exemption from the ‘right to strike’ to
those police staff roles which are operationally critical
Lead in times and processes to vary working times and arrangements are also
prohibitive for police staff
Chp. 5 Performance/ Post- Related Pay
Pay rates and pay lines for police staff should continue to be determined locally
Chp. 8 Pay Machinery
A Pay Review Body should apply to police staff as well as police officers
6.1.3 What UNISON and ACPO could usefully discuss:
The suggestion that the right to strike should be removed from police staff in
certain roles is not supported with any evidence that industrial action has
been a feature in the police service since the Police Staff Council was
created in 1996. The police service deals in managing threat, which is why
this suggestion has been made, but UNISON believes that removing the right
to strike would take away a fundamental employee right that simply cannot
be justified. We have suggested many times to the Employers Side of the
Police Staff Council that we engage in positive discussion over a dispute
resolution machinery to avoid the need for strike action in the police service,
but this has never been responded to positively by the Employers. We make
this offer again for the record.
ACPO repeats many times in its submission that it wants to see the
convergence of police officer and police staff pay and reward. Although
UNISON has to date stopped short of calling for the harmonisation of police
officer and police staff pay and conditions, we have put on record our wish to
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see the two sets of pay and conditions brought into closer alignment, with
particular reference to the need for an equal pay audit to cross the whole
workforce. UNISON is now willing, without prejudice, to explore the pros and
cons of harmonisation of the pay and conditions of staff and officers. This is
therefore an area for further positive engagement between ACPO and
UNISON.
6.2 APA Submission
(Numbering in brackets relates to the paragraph numbers in the APA submission
document)
6.2.1 Where UNISON and the APA agree:
Change to police staff pay and reward needs to be ‘profound’ (3)
Job evaluation will be needed to underpin any new pay structure (72)
National pay bands should be set up for police staff (74)
National pay bands could help improve parity between police staff and police
officers’ pay (67)
Premium pay for shift working is a valid element in any pay package (78)
All existing PRP for police staff should be abolished (100)
All previous attempts to introduce PRP into the police service have been
largely unsuccessful (101)
A new reward system should encourage and support continuing development
and up-skilling of police staff (102)
Pay structures should incentivise career development (111)
Pay bands should be up-rated to reflect ‘cost-of-living’ (112)
Proposal for competence based pay bands (113)
6.2.2 Where UNISON and the APA do not agree:
Police staff are inflexible (53) – no evidence of this
Police staff are more inflexible than police officers (58) – evidence?
There is no need for consultation on changes to planned shift rosters (85) –
work life balance and diversity considerations suggest otherwise
Abolish overtime (93)
15
Final salary pension schemes should be abolished (191)
Right to strike for police staff could be removed (204)
In conclusion, there are more areas of agreement between UNISON and the
APA than areas of disagreement. We believe the areas of dissent could be
reduced as part of an imaginative negotiation over a new pay and conditions
settlement for police staff.
What is very clear from a comparison of the UNISON, ACPO and APA
responses is that we all agree on the following:
The current police staff pay and reward arrangements are no longer fit for
purpose and are in need of urgent reform
Reform will need to be radical to achieve common objectives
A new reward system will have to mainstream a link to skills and competence
Performance related pay is unsuited to the police service and has no place in
a modernised pay system
There should be a principle of consistency between the pay and conditions of
police officers and police staff and any differences justified on objective and
transparent grounds (eg.operational need).
7 Response to Part 2 Call for Evidence Questions
In this section UNISON answers those questions relating to police staff set out in the
Part 2 Call for Evidence. All question numbering remains that set out in the original call
for evidence document.
Basic Pay
Overall
1.1 What are the future challenges facing policing and to what extent should the
pay and conditions of officers and staff be reformed to meet these?
Please refer to the section ‘Police Staff Pay and Reward: the Current Position’ above
for a response to this question from the perspective of future pay challenges, e.g. equal
pay.
Other challenges which will impact on pay and reward are as follows:
Cuts will mean less police staff overall and those staff remaining being asked
to do different things: this will make the need for an accurate standardised job
evaluation scheme covering all police staff more urgent as new roles will need to be
properly evaluated and benchmarked against each other regardless of which force
they are in to ensure that efficient use is being made of scarce public funding
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resources.
The cuts agenda will not lessen the need for forces to be able to recruit the
brightest and best candidates to perform the vital work carried out by police
staff: the police service will need to continue to offer an attractive employment
package to police staff in the future, particularly as the job of policing will become
more demanding as staff are stripped out of forces to hit government cuts targets.
Any attempt by employers to use the current economic downturn to cut police staff
terms and conditions will have a negative effect on the ability of forces to attract a
high calibre workforce now and in the future.
Cuts will call into question the value to the public purse of maintaining
expensive individual force level pay systems: in particular, the purchase by
forces of often identical off-the-shelf job evaluation packages/pay and grading
advice from profit-making consultancy organisations will be open to criticism as it
will take money away from the delivery of front-line policing. The Government has
told forces that it is no longer acceptable for 43 forces to buy their own IT systems
from the private sector because it is a waste of public money and this will not be
tolerated. Few could argue with this, however, surprisingly the same logic is not
deployed by the Government when it comes to police staff pay and reward. In this
field it would appear that it is acceptable from the Government’s perspective for
forces to buy their police staff job evaluation and pay and grading advice to suit their
own whim and regardless of the cost. This view will have to change if we are to
make progress on reforming pay and reward.
Cuts will mean that 43 police forces each designing their own local pay
systems will no longer be viable if HR staff are made redundant: force HR
departments will find it increasingly difficult to support bespoke solutions to pay and
grading because of the lack of resources, if HR staff are made redundant
Collaboration and joint working between forces will necessitate more
commonality between the pay rates of police staff doing the same or similar
jobs: forces have already found out to their cost the negative effect on morale of
having police staff from different forces working alongside each other on
collaboration projects doing the same job on different salaries. PCSOs can now be
used for mutual aid and work under the direction and control of a chief constable
from another force. This will lead to problems as and when the PCSOs working
alongside each other find out that they are on very different pay and conditions. The
only solution to this is to have all forces use the same pay and grading system for all
police staff.
The advent of Police and Crime Commissioners threatens the integrity of the
police staff workforce and therefore the delivery of the Review’s ‘one police
service’ principle: the Review Team should be aware that under current
Government plans, the advent of Commissioners will see the police staff workforce
split into employees of the Commissioner and employees of the Chief Constable in
each force in England and Wales. This crazy outcome, which will double the
number of police employers in England and Wales from 43 to 86 overnight, is just
one of the tangled accommodations which the Service is being told to make by
Ministers to facilitate the Commissioner concept. More information on this scenario
is available at Appendix D, which reproduces a UNISON letter to the Police Minister
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Nick Herbert. Delivering a coherent settlement on police staff pay and reward across
86 new employers is going to be a major challenge and one on which UNISON
believes the Review Team should reflect.
The enthusiasm of the Government and some forces/police authorities for
outsourcing police staff functions further threatens the integrity of the police
staff workforce and the deliverability of the Review’s recommendations:
Cleveland Police has already outsourced the majority of its police staff workforce to
Steria, Avon and Somerset Constabulary has seconded all its police staff to the
IBM-led consortium South West One and Lincolnshire Police, West Midlands Police
and Surrey Police are being pressured by the Home Office to outsource all of their
support functions to new business partnering arrangements. If this trend continues
there will be far fewer police staff left to witness the roll-out of the Review’s
recommendations than perhaps the Review Team imagines. The professed ‘one
police service’ solution will fall on stony ground if this is to be the future of policing.
The failure of the Government to support the concept of a ‘strategic
employment framework’ for policing threatens to undermine the ‘one police
service’ principle upon which the Review Team aims to build its
recommendations for medium/long term changes to police pay and reward:
Much work was done under the previous government to support workforce
modernisation and the development of the best workforce mix of officers and staff to
deliver policing priorities. The present government has shown little interest in the
concept of workforce modernisation, preferring to leave staffing matters to forces
and concentrate instead on cuts, partnering, outsourcing and computers. If the
government cannot be persuaded of the need for a strategic approach to pay reform
(one that is more sophisticated than just cutting terms and conditions) and an
employment framework in which to embed that reform, it will make it more difficult
than it needs to be to deliver lasting change.
Police staff are now carrying out a wide range of roles which were previously
the sole province of police officers. If these new responsibilities are not
recognised in the pay and conditions package it will undermine the ability of
forces to recruit and retain quality staff and entrench the two-tier nature of the
current workforce: Scenes of crime officers, detention officers, investigation
officers, suspect interviewers and financial analysts, to name a few, are now police
staff roles. In many cases, these staff and others are required by their forces to take
on the role of ‘Officers in the Case’ when presenting evidence to both magistrates
and crown courts. In such capacity, they carry the same responsibility to the court
as a police officer. PCSOs are now the public and accessible face of policing in
England and Wales. If these workforce modernisation developments are not
properly recognised in the pay and conditions package for police staff it will
undermine any attempts by the service to present itself as a unified, equally valued
workforce.
Basic Pay for Police Staff
1.26 Is the current system of locally determining police staff pay scales correct
and why? If not, what system should replace it?
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1.27 Should there be a national pay scale with all police staff roles on the same
pay scale regardless of the force in which they work? What would the
benefits and disadvantages be?
Please refer to the section ‘Police Staff Pay and Reward: the Case for a National Pay
and Grading System’ above for a full response to these questions.
The terminology used in these questions is wrong. All police staff in England and
Wales, who are conditioned to the Police Staff Council, are already on the same pay
scale. This is the national pay scale agreed by the Council and subject to change via
national cost-of-living negotiations.
What is actually in place currently is a ‘...system of locally determining police staff pay
grades...’ by cutting up the national pay scale into local grades. It would be helpful if
the Review could regularise its terminology when making its final report to avoid
confusion.
1.28 If a national pay scale system were to be introduced, how should it be
phased in given that the effects would vary from force to force?
In line with the practice adopted in other major pay and grading reviews, a national pay
and grading system would be introduced via an assimilation process. In such a
process, police staff would migrate onto their new grade in a national grading system
via level transfer unless their existing pay rate was below the starting point of their new
grade. In the latter scenario, staff would move to the lowest pay point on their new band
at the implementation date of the new system. Staff who found themselves above the
maximum of their new pay band would be ‘red-circled’ for a period to time, ie. on a
protected salary before moving down to the new maximum for their grade.
In NHS Agenda for Change there was a degree of phasing in, insofar as staff on pre-
existing salaries a long way below the minima of their new Agenda for Change pay
band assimilated to their new pay rates via a number of transitional pay points.
Basic Pay Equality
1.29 In reforming the basic pay of police officers and staff, what are the
implications for the protected characteristics specified in the Equality Act
2010 and what could be done to mitigate these? How do the implications
and mitigations vary by rank or for police officers and staff?
As we have pointed out in earlier sections of this submission, one of the benefits of
moving to a national pay and grading scheme for all police staff in England and Wales
is the ability this would give the stakeholders to manage the equality dimensions of the
new settlement at a strategic level. Female police staff, in particular, have not
benefitted from proper equality proofing of pay systems locally. Forces which have,
either not conducted job evaluation, or done so in a way which would not meet current
expectations in regard to equality proofing, have failed to serve their female police staff
in relation to basic pay equality.
UNISON has well founded concerns over the failure of forces to equality proof their
existing pay and grading systems. This is a matter of real concern to UNISON and one
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on which we believe the Review Team needs to concentrate if its recommendations are
to have credibility.
An ‘x-factor’
1.35 Should some staff roles carry an ‘x-factor’ or something similar? If so,
which roles and to what extent is this already factored in when calculating
the salary band for some or all police staff roles? Should the allocation of
an ‘x-factor’ be left to local forces?
UNISON believes very strongly that the ‘x-factor’ referred to in the Call for Evidence
describes a continuum of constraints that apply in differing degrees to both police
officers and to police staff.
The Call for Evidence claims that this ‘x-factor’ is, ‘...the level of compensation which
police officers receive in their basic pay for the particular constraints on the freedoms of
police officers in some aspects of their and their families’ private lives.’ In fact there is
no particular evidence that this ‘x-factor’ has been compensated for either in police
officers’ or police staff pay; such has been the lack of transparency over the
composition of pay in the service. The Review now gives an opportunity for this
transparency to be provided and UNISON welcomes this.
On behalf of our police staff members we argue strongly that an ‘x-factor’ applies to
their employment. Like police officers, police staff have to accept the following
intrusions/restrictions on their private lives as part of their employment with the police
service:
Pre- and post-employment vetting, including information regarding family members
Pre-employment DNA and fingerprint searches against crime scene data
Drug testing in specific occupations
Prohibition on outside employment/business interests
Restrictions on outside association (inappropriate association policies)
Restrictions on the level of personal debt
Restrictions on outside political activity
Prohibition on raising a complaint to the IPCC regarding the actions of their force in
the context of private life activity (eg. false arrest)
Police staff ‘Standards of Professional Behaviour’ policy applied by forces to off-duty
police staff conduct, as well as to work situations
Ability of forces to recycle information gathered as part of criminal investigations in
police staff disciplinary procedures
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Requirement to disclose cautions and civil proceedings to the employer, with likely
consequences for employment
Requirement to disclose when called as a witness in any criminal or civil court
proceedings
Mandatory retention on duty/recall to duty in some forces and associated disruption
of private life
Prohibition on annual leave during key periods, eg between April and August 2012
in respect of the Olympics
Risk of injury is high in operational police staff roles such as detention officer and
PCSO
It is a fact that, due to the difference in employment status of staff and officers, police
staff are far more likely than police officers to be dismissed from their force as a result
of a breach of one or more of the above.
UNISON therefore supports the incorporation of recompense for the police staff ‘x-
factor’ in any settlement arising from the recommendations of the Review. We suggest
that the ‘x-factor’ should be compensated via an allowance along the lines of the
operational allowance awarded to armed services personnel. UNISON would expect
the police staff ‘x-factor’ to be set in relation to the figure eventually agreed for police
officers.
The concept of an ‘x-factor’ applying to both officers and staff, albeit to differing
degrees, would fit well with the ‘single police service’ principle set out in the principles
by which the Review Team has agreed to conduct its work.
The negotiation of an ‘x-factor’ for police staff would need to be handled nationally to
ensure a ‘single police service’ approach to this allowance. Allowing forces to set the
allowance locally, if the police officer allowance were set nationally, would clearly
frustrate this ‘single police service’ approach and damage the integrity of the allowance
in our members’ eyes.
Regional Pay
1.45 Should the arrangements for paying staff regional supplements be
changed? If so how?
Whatever the ‘arrangements for paying (police) staff regional supplements’ are, and
they have not been properly disclosed to UNISON, they are inadequate and
discriminatory when compared to those enjoyed by police officers. Were an equality
impact assessment to be carried out into the payment of south east allowances in the
police service, it would throw up the obvious finding that whilst the predominantly male
police officer workforce enjoyed a transparent south east allowance, the majority female
police staff workforce was denied such an allowance.
As UNISON pointed out in our response to the call for evidence to Part 1 of the Review,
police staff do not currently benefit from the £2000 or £1000 south east weighting
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allowances enjoyed by their police officer colleagues. UNISON believes that this is
unacceptable and needs to be rectified as an outcome of the Independent Review and
any negotiations which follow final publication. Both officers and staff should be
compensated for the higher cost of living in the south east by the same mechanism.
Both ACPO and indeed the Review Team, as evidenced on pages 160-161 of the Part
1 Report, believe that there continues to be objective justification for the payment of the
above allowances to police officers. UNISON would not argue with this analysis, but
was disappointed that the Review Team did not give attention to the deficit experienced
by police staff, as pointed out in our original submission. Adopting the principle of
‘single police service’ would require the absence of police staff south east weighting to
be objectively justified, which to date has not happened.
As we indicated in our original submission, some forces in the south east like to claim
that the basic pay of their police staff is automatically adjusted to the local labour
market so as to reflect the demands of recruitment and retention. This, in turn, justifies
the failure of those forces to offer their police staff a transparent south east weighting
allowance. The Labour Research Department data on comparative pay rates for police
staff jobs in 2003, referred to on page 22 of our original submission, provided very clear
evidence that for most of the jobs analysed, forces in the south east paid their police
staff on average only one PSC pay point higher than forces in the rest of England and
Wales.
Additional evidence from 2010, on comparative pay rates between forces, presented
first in our original submission, showed conclusively that forces in the South East were
not in most cases paying their police staff the highest comparable salaries for the same,
or similar jobs. We present this data again in the context of this second submission
because we believe it provides a challenge to those forces which would have us believe
that an element of south east weighting is incorporated into the basic pay of their police
staff.
This evidence, set out at Appendix B, shows for example that:
Staffordshire, Gloucestershire and North Wales forces pay their admin clerks more
than Essex, Surrey, Sussex or Thames Valley police
North Wales and Leicestershire police pay more to their caretakers than Essex,
Surrey, Sussex or Thames Valley police
Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Dorset and Devon and Cornwall pay their scenes of
crime officers more than Sussex or Thames Valley
North Wales, Lancashire, Dorset and Norfolk pay their criminal justice unit first line
supervisors more than Thames Valley, Surrey or Essex
Although this trend is reversed for some of the roles analysed, the over-riding
impression given by the figures we have gathered is that there is no evidence of a
south east weighting being transparently applied to police staff jobs in the south east of
England.
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UNISON refers back in this context to the following conclusions set out in the Part 1
Report of the Review (p 161):
‘Living in London and the south east of England is more expensive than other parts of
the country. In the UK, the objective of home ownership is a reasonable one, and is
certainly one which should be within the capacity of police officers...It is therefore
reasonable for police forces in the part of the country which has the highest cost of
living to be enabled to pay more to police officers in order to recruit and retain men and
women of the necessary calibre.’
UNISON agrees, but would like to see this eminently logical position extended to police
staff, for whom home ownership in the south east of England is also a reasonable
aspiration.
Outside of London and the south east, UNISON does not believe that there is any
evidence that any regional labour markets exist which demand the extension of the
concept of regional pay more widely. In order to quantify this, UNISON commissioned
Incomes Data Services to carry out a literature review of available evidence on the
manifestation of regional pay and the justifications behind it. This evidence is presented
in full in section 9 of this submission.
In summary, the findings set out in this IDS research report are as follows:
Complex regional pay systems are rare in both the private and public sectors
due to the complications and resources involved in implementing and managing
such systems
Zonal pay systems generally reflect the established public sector hierarchy of
London, South East and Rest of UK pay rates
Official data shows that outside London and the South East , there is little
difference in earnings between regions
Official statistics show that there is very little variation in the cost of living
between different regions outside London and the South East
Previous experiments with complex regional pay systems have not been
successful, and ,in the case of the Health Service, led directly to Agenda for
Change
Contribution –related pay and role-based pay
2.1 Should progression up a future pay scales be decided by an individual’s
performance/contribution and, if so, how should this happen?
Like other stakeholders ACPO, the APA and the Police Federation, UNISON is totally
opposed to the concept of performance related pay (PRP) in the police service.
Most stakeholders are opposed to the concept of PRP in the police service for the
following reasons, UNISON included:
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Does not fit easily with the vocational nature of policing
Lack of any credible performance development review process upon which to base
a PRP scheme
Difficulty of reconciling the delivery of ‘public good’/reassurance by police staff with
objective output measures on which to base PRP
Problem of reconciling an individual PRP award with the team-work ethos of policing
Lack of obvious funding to introduce a meaningful scheme
Public hostility to the concept of paying officers or staff bonuses for doing their job
Lack of any credible evidence that PRP motivates staff to any great degree
De-motivation of staff who do not receive a PRP payment, particularly if the basis of
the payment does not recognise teamwork, and/or is seen as resting on a subjective
decision of management
The almost unanimous opposition to PRP within the service makes its implementation a
complete non-starter. UNISON believes that it would be sensible for the Review Team
to acknowledge this and move on.
2.4 Are there any experiences, positive or negative, of performance related pay
in the public or private sector which the review should take into account
when considering its recommendations?
With some exceptions, performance related pay or PRP is not the dominant form of pay
setting in the sectors in which UNISON members work.
Energy companies generally use PRP schemes which pay a standard increase to all
staff, with additional payments for higher performance. In the Energy sector it is quite
common for managers below Director level to be on individual contracts where their pay
increase and bonus payments are derived from a performance setting mechanism.
Unions do monitor outcomes and advise members if asked.
The Environment Agency introduced a PRP scheme two years ago. The scheme
allows progression through scales subject to satisfactorily being assessed by a
manager on performance, competency and contribution. Once staff hit the maximum
for their scale, the value of their annual progression is converted into a non-
consolidated lump sum. The main complaint by staff is that the assessment outcome is
subjective and open to gerrymandering by management. Furthermore, when finance is
tight (as it is now) and when pay is subject to government pay restraints, it becomes
difficult if not impossible to fund the scheme. It appears that this year staff in the
Environment Agency will get progression but no cost of living increase.
Ofsted has also implemented a full PRP scheme. UNISON recently raised serious
concerns about the scheme, suggesting that there were “widespread and systematic
failures” in the way the scheme was currently being carried out. Problems highlighted
24
by UNISON included failure by management to carry out required one-to-one meetings
and end of year review meetings, leaving staff with insufficient feedback about the
quality of their work. Other claims included inaccurate records, equality impact
assessments not completed as required and moderation procedures not followed. A
report for the Ofsted trade union side concluded that “the appeals process, like the PRP
process it supports, is badly designed and executed, wholly opaque, and fundamentally
biased”.
These problems reflect the widespread experience of PRP schemes in other sectors.
PRP always involves subjective judgment by managers about the performance of their
staff, and as such is open to bias and inconsistency. In the case of the Ofsted scheme,
there is a bias built into the scheme’s banding system. The scheme evaluates an
employee’s performance in relationship to that of their colleagues, and determines that
up to 20% of staff will be placed in Band 1, approximately 75% in Band 2 and roughly
5% in Band 3. Even if all staff are performing satisfactorily, the scheme requires that
some will still have to come out at the bottom of the pack. In fact the documentation for
the scheme states that “not all staff placed on Band 3 are under-performing.” Managers
ensure that their own grading is in the top bands, leaving the required places in the
bottom bands to be filled by lower paid workers. This creates a concentration of Band 3
evaluations amongst the lowest paid. The scheme has engendered a perception that
pay in Ofsted is extremely unfair – not a good model for staff whose work involves
promoting good practice in educational institutions.
The effectiveness of any pay system depends many factors. However, there are some
problems inherent in all performance related pay schemes:
Staff motivation and morale: A wide range of research has found schemes
less effective than expected. In the public sector this is frequently due to cash
limits making rewards for high performance ratings too small to motivate staff.
Problems of poor training for managers and inadequate communication with staff
have had a negative impact on staff morale. Studies of NHS managers in 1997
and1998 showed that performance-related pay did not contribute to improve
performance but did cause jealousies between staff and undermine moral.
(Dowling and Richardson, 1997, Marsden and French, 1998).
Fairness: Because performance related pay systems are based on appraisal of
the individual worker, often by their line manager, bias and personal favouritism
can influence the result of pay reviews. Instead of motivating workers,
performance pay can “undermine performance of both the individual and the
organisation by undermining team work, encouraging a short term focus and
leading people to believe that pay is not related to performance, but to having
the ‘right’ relationships and an ingratiating personality”. (Jeffrey Pfeffer,
HarvardBusiness Review, May/June 1998)
Discrimination: Recent research found that performance based pay systems
often discriminate against women because: the appraisal process is subject to
gender bias and stereotypes; women’s skills are often undervalued by their
managers (and by women themselves); women—especially those working part
time have fewer opportunities for training, and managers are less likely to
correctly assess women’s training needs. (M.T. Strebler, M. Thompson,
P. Heron, Skills, Competencies and Gender; Issues for pay and training, IES
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Study 333, 1997). Performance pay may run counter to the development of
objective, gender neutral job evaluation schemes which are being introduced to
achieve equal pay for work of equal value. A study by the Institute of Personnel
and Development, found that almost two-thirds of employers had no provision for
monitoring sex and racial discrimination in their performance related pay
systems.
2.8 The Part 1 report stated that the review would examine the case for at-risk
pay. If such a model were introduced, what percentage of pay should be ‘at
risk’ in the case of poor performance? Should the percentage be the same
for all ranks?
Under the current terms of the Police Staff Council Handbook, it is the case that
progression through a pay scale may be delayed in cases of poor performance.
UNISON supports the continuation of a similar ‘at risk pay’ model, but one which is
linked to a post holder’s ability to evidence that they are applying the knowledge and
skills required by their post, rather than on crude performance measures. This model
would be similar to the one which currently operates in the NHS Agenda for Change
pay progression model, which we explore in more detail below and as set out in
Appendix E. This procedure is underpinned by an appeal mechanism for the staff
member concerned if they wish to challenge the decision to withhold an increment.
2.10 How could ‘at risk’ pay be implemented given a judgement on performance
in any given year would be made retrospectively?
In the case of the withheld increment option, the performance development review is
simply held at the end of one pay year in order to inform the progression of the
employee in the following year.
Fitness Testing
2.30 Should some or all police staff roles carry a requirement that the holder is
required to undergo regular fitness tests? If so, which roles should these
be?
UNISON supports the implementation of appropriate fitness testing with cause for key
police staff roles only. Fitness falls into a number of different categories, including
cardio/endurance, strength and flexibility. Different police staff roles call on these
elements of fitness in different ways.
There are few police staff roles which involve physical confrontation – the job of custody
officer being the most obvious of these. In the case of custody officers, it is probably
more important from a personal safety point of view that they are trained in self-defence
and restraint techniques, which do not in themselves imply high cardio-vascular
capability, but may need strength.
PCSOs are tasked to avoid such confrontation, but do need to be fit enough to carry out
patrol duties and the physical effort that this requires. They do not expect to be chasing
suspects on foot at high speed; this is the job of police officers.
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Scenes of crime officers need to be fit enough to work in difficult or confined spaces,
which may require flexibility, but not necessarily strength or cardio-vascular ability.
Many police staff roles are office-based and do not require high levels of physical
fitness. For these staff, fitness testing is not appropriate.
It is in the interests of both staff and forces for the workforce to be healthy, and
UNISON supports a range of initiatives in force to maintain the mental and physical
health. This could be healthy eating options in staff canteens, health screening, good
occupational health provision etc.
Skills
2.32 How should accredited qualifications and professional development be
rewarded or reflected in pay?
UNISON believes that a national pay and grading scheme for police staff would enable
all the police stakeholders to design a modern, fit-for-purpose pay progression scheme
for our members. We have gone on record on many occasions to say that such a new
scheme might include a competency related pay progression element similar to that
operating in the NHS Agenda for Change scheme. This could link pay progression to
professional development in a way suggested by the call for evidence.
The current fragmentation of police staff pay and grading arrangements into 43 widely
differing models has frustrated any attempts in the past by stakeholders to consider
more appropriate pay progression schemes. Until or unless there is commitment to
address this problem via a single national pay and grading scheme, it is difficult to see
how progress will be made. UNISON has been concerned for some time that existing
police staff pay progression arrangements are potentially discriminatory, but we have
not had the national locus to enable us to address this. This independent review
provides the potential for this national locus to be established. If we miss this
opportunity, it is unlikely that any strategic work will be done at all on pay progression
for the foreseeable future. We ask the Review Team to reflect on the reality of this
position and shape its recommendations accordingly.
So what might a police service competency related pay progression scheme look like?
To answer this question UNISON draws the attention of the Review Team to the way in
which the NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF) relates to the Agenda for
Change pay arrangements.
The Knowledge and Skills Framework is a key part of the NHS Agenda for Change.
Each NHS employee has:
A KSF outline describing the knowledge and skills relevant to their job
A personal development plan with agreed learning needs for the coming year
A right to learning and development opportunities
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The Agenda for Change KSF is a national partnership agreement. It is based on the
principle of equity so that all staff, whatever their role, are supported to learn and
develop.
The KSF embraces the principles of good people management. It sets out in a clear
and structured way the knowledge and skills required in every NHS job; how staff can
access learning and development and how they can develop their careers.
Each employer must appoint a Joint KSF Committee with 2 KSF leads, one
management and one trade union, which jointly implement at local level via a local plan.
Structure and Language of the KSF
KSF Post Outline: contains all the information describing the knowledge and skills
of every NHS post. Outlines are developed using job descriptions via a jointly
agreed local process under the auspices of the local Joint KSF Committee. The
outline is made up of:
Dimensions: there are six core dimensions:
- Communications
- Personal and People Development
- Health, Safety and Security
- Service Improvements
- Quality
- Equality and Diversity
There are a further 24 dimensions which relate to some jobs, but not others.
Levels: for each dimension there are four levels which describe the relevant
knowledge and skills required for the post.
Indicators: for each dimension there are a series of indicators which describe the
type of knowledge and skills which apply.
A KSF grid sets out the dimensions and levels required for every post.
The Development Review Process
The Development Review Process is designed to:
Jointly review how the employee is applying their knowledge and skills to meet the
demands of their post
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Produce a jointly agreed personal development plan (PDP) setting out his / her
jointly agreed learning and development
Ensure the manager supports jointly identified learning and development
Evaluate the learning and development that has taken place
KSF Gateway Reviews and Pay Progression
In Agenda for Change there are two pay progression “gateway” points. At each
gateway the employee and manager jointly assess whether the employee is applying
the knowledge and skills to meet the job. The first NHS gateway takes place at
12 months using a reduced or “foundation” KSF post outline. The second gateway,
based on the full KSF outline occurs towards the top of the pay band.
UNISON believes that the police service should use the KSF template to design an
appropriate link between competencies, skills and pay for police staff. Further
information on the way in which the KSF operates in the Health Service is contained in
Appendix E.
2.33 What changes would need to be made to ensure all officers and staff have
an appropriate skills ‘ladder’ up which to climb?
The NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework is designed not only to provide staff with
the opportunities to develop the skills and competencies to meet the requirements of
their current job. It also provides staff with the chance to think about the skills and
knowledge they will need to acquire if they wish to apply for a different type of job in the
NHS via their personal development plans. UNISON wishes to see this principle
extended to a similar scheme to underpin a national pay and grading scheme for the
police service.
In the NHS, all national occupational standards devised by Skills for Health, the sector
skills body, are mapped against NHS KSF dimensions. Evidence used to demonstrate
competence against Skills for Health national occupational standards can also be used
to show that staff have met their NHS KSF profile.
Role –based pay
2.44 Is it feasible to compare police staff roles, one with another, nationally?
What would be the advantages and disadvantages of this?
The evidence from other major job evaluation schemes in the public sector is that it
would most certainly be feasible to compare police staff roles with each other via a
national job evaluation exercise. This is exactly what happened in the Health Service,
with the Agenda for Change process, and on a smaller scale in 2006 with the
introduction of the Probation Service pay modernisation agreement.
In both cases, local pay and grading schemes – previously operated by health trusts
and probation areas – were wound up and replaced by a single national grading
structure into which all health service and probation service roles were assimilated.
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Prior to the creation of Agenda for Change and the modernised Probation pay package
it might have been thought impossible to incorporate the range of health service and
probation service jobs in to one single pay and grading scheme, but in fact this was
achieved without enormous difficulty.
The clue to the success of both operations was the agreement in both cases to create a
set of generic job profiles, subject to job evaluation, into which the majority of
NHS/Probation staff were slotted without the need for individual job evaluations to be
carried. For those roles which did not fit the generic job profiles an individual job
evaluation was conducted. This was only necessary for around 10% of roles in both
services. By this process all NHS and Probation Service jobs were successfully placed
on one of the new pay grades in the new pay and grading schemes.
The advantages of this process, in both cases, were:
Joint development and ownership of the evaluation process
Transparent job ranking which had the support of employers, unions and staff
Clear basis for the establishment of new pay grades
2.45 How should a move onto any new system of this kind be phased?
UNISON does not envisage any particular problems or difficulties which would require
phasing arrangements for the introduction of a new national pay and grading system for
police staff. There was minimal phasing for NHS Agenda for Change, with the
exception of hours of work and annual leave, and the same was true of the Probation
deal.
There would need to be protection arrangements negotiated for those police staff
whose existing salaries were in excess of the maxima of their new pay bands in the
national pay and grading system. Indefinite pay protection contravenes equal pay
legislation, so this protection would have to be for an agreed time-limited period, after
which those staff affected would move onto their new substantive pay band. This would
produce medium and long-term savings for the forces concerned.
Overtime and unsocial hours
2.48 Is it feasible to remove paid overtime from the police service? To what
extent is it ingrained in the culture of management and/or the workforce?
UNISON does not believe that it is possible to remove paid overtime from the police
service. Cuts to the police workforce are predicted to remove 16,000 police staff, 1,800
PCSO and 16,000 police officer posts by the end of the current CSR period. This will
lead to even more pressure on available police resources and increase, rather than
decrease, the need for police overtime. In an emergency service, with unpredictable
resource demands, removing the option of paid overtime would significantly reduce the
operational resilience of the police service. One of the most common uses of overtime
by forces is incurred when police staff are retained on duty at the end of a shift.
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2.49 Can overtime be bought out, paid for via a fixed allowance or simply be
part of the expectations for certain posts? What alternatives should be
considered and why?
The PSC Handbook does provide an alternative to the payment of an hourly overtime
rate, namely that:
‘...an employee who works a regular pattern of hours in excess of an average of
37 hours per week may be paid a locally agreed salary supplement.’
UNISON has no particular evidence of such supplements being used by forces. The
problem with such supplements is that they often frustrate transparency and lead to
questions about what the allowance is actually compensating for. In reality, it is far
easier and more transparent to simply apply an hourly overtime rate.
In many forces there already exists the option for staff to opt for TOIL instead of
overtime, with this TOIL awarded at a premium rate, eg. time and a half TOIL. However,
the Government’s cuts agenda for the police service will make it ever more difficult for
staff to take TOIL, as workload pressures are set to increase.
2.50 Should the overtime regulations for officers and staff be brought into line?
To what extent would a police officer ‘x-factor’ payment require a
difference in approach for officers and staff?
UNISON agrees that the overtime provisions for staff and officers should be
harmonised. If this was on the basis of a common overtime rate, eg time and a half,
there would not need to be any consideration of the ‘x-factor’. For both staff and
officers, the ‘x-factor’ would be part of the make-up of basic pay, upon which overtime
would be calculated.
2.51 Why do certain ranks and pay points for staff attract paid overtime,
whereas others do not? Should this remain, or change, and why?
The Police Staff Council Handbook allows police staff, who are paid up to pay point 24,
to earn overtime for any work in excess of 37 hours/week. The rationale for this
provision is that more senior staff in the organisation are expected to work overtime as
a matter of course in their work and that their salary compensates them for this to some
extent. However, this has never been quantified and UNISON would support a review
of the cut off point for paid overtime. This will become particularly pertinent were
staffing cuts to lead to more overtime demands being made on more senior staff in
forces.
2.52 What evidence is there that the inability to claim paid overtime above the
rank of sergeant, or above a certain pay point for police staff, reduces the
attractiveness of promotion?
UNISON has no particular evidence that the current Police Staff Council overtime bar is
a barrier to promotion. In many police staff roles there is no equivalent of the police
officer promotion ladder. Police staff staffing structures are relatively flat these days
when compared with the officer rank structure. For most police staff therefore, the
opportunities provided by promotion generally outweigh the loss of overtime. In
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addition, in many forces, the overtime bar is relaxed if there are extenuating operational
requirements, or pre-planned operations, that require enhanced overtime provision to
be made.
2.55 Should police officers and staff be compensated for working unsocial
hours in the same manner? Please explain any differences needed.
UNISON would support work to scope the potential harmonisation of staff and officer
allowances for working unsocial hours. We cannot immediately identify why there
would need to be differences in the way this compensation would work.
Pay Negotiating Machinery
Police Staff
5.12 How should police staff pay be determined to ensure that it is fair to police
staff, management and the public?
The current make up of the Police Staff Council ensures that the interests of staff,
management and the public are all properly represented. The trade unions obviously
speak for the workforce, ACPO for management and the APA/Home Office for the
general public. In a free collective bargaining body, such as the Police Staff Council,
the course of negotiation usually results in a compromise outcome which is felt-fair to
all the parties who sign up to that agreement. The pay review body option, which has
been introduced in other parts of the public sector, does not allow for this compromise,
insofar as an independent panel ends up making the decision on outcomes.
The absence from the Police Staff Council of the Met Police, City of London Police,
Kent and Surrey Police means that ACPO, APA and the Home Office have no say in
whether their constituents’ interests are being properly recognised in those forces.
5.13 ACPO, in their submission to Part 1, stated that there should be
‘consideration of the removal of the right to strike for certain police staff
roles.’ Should this be the case?
No. There is no evidence that industrial action by police staff has been a high risk for
police forces in England and Wales since the Police Staff Council was created in 1996.
Over this period, there have been two isolated cases of force level strike action; a total
of three days in two forces over a period of 15 years.
It is understood that ACPO deals in risk as part of the day to day management of forces
and that theoretical, as well as actual, risk is considered by senior police officers in this
context. However, the reality of the situation does not warrant the suggestion of a
radical change to the employment status of police staff.
The Independent Review has set out from the position that the current ban on police
officers taking industrial action, or belonging to an independent trade union, is a natural
starting point for the debate. It could just as easily have begun a debate on whether the
1919 ban on officers taking industrial action should now be up for review? In this
response UNISON will confine its attention to the question above.
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The ACPO suggestion of a strike ban for police staff, keys into a wider debate in ACPO
over whether police staff should be brought closer to officers in other ways? For
example, some in ACPO have suggested in the past that selected police staff could be
partially warranted and sworn into office like police officers. This would raise the
question of whether staff were to become constables, and entitled to the full range of
pay and benefits which would result? With police officers’ pay and on-costs often
double that of comparable police staff, this ACPO concept would struggle to get off the
drawing board from a cost point of view. Bringing in a no-strike clause to staff contracts
would significantly increase the ‘x-factor’ for those staff and so increase staff costs.
UNISON does not support the concept of giving police staff ‘warranted’ or ‘sworn’
status. It should not be necessary to rely on an historical concept of the police
workforce for policing in the 21st century. Such a move would further divide the police
workforce into: fully sworn police officers, partially sworn police staff/officers, non-sworn
police staff. This does not feel like a ‘single police service’, but rather one based on
new gradations of rank and status and a potentially more complicated pay structure for
police staff as result of having to compensate for a new part ‘sworn’ status.
Industrial relations in the vast majority of police forces are good or very good.
Relationships of trust have been built up over many years of co-operative working
between force management and union. Both sides have to work at this and make
compromises to make the relationship succeed. Unbalancing that relationship by
withdrawing the right to strike would damage it and threaten disharmony at force level.
UNISON has offered on many occasions to discuss an arbitration option for forces and
union branches to help avoid industrial strife arising in future. This would not preclude
the right to strike, which would remain, but would commit all the parties to accept the
outcome of arbitration in the event of a dispute being referred in this way. In the
industrial action at Nottinghamshire Police (30 August 2011), the force refused
UNISON’s overtures to take the dispute to ACAS for conciliation/ arbitration prior to the
action taking place. If UNISON’s option of arbitration machinery for the police staff
workforce had been in place, it is likely that the dispute at Nottingham would have been
avoided.
UNISON therefore prefers a positive proposal of an arbitration process, rather than the
negative one of banning police staff from taking industrial action.
5.14 Should the present Police Staff Council remain, be reformed, or be
replaced? Similarly, should the existing arrangements in those forces who
negotiate outside the PSC framework remain, be reformed, or be replaced?
The advent of Police and Crime Commissioners, if implemented, will inevitably require
the Police Staff Council to be reformed. It is not clear what impact Commissioners will
have on the PSC Employers Side? Will Commissioners have the majority of seats?
How will Commissioners see their role? And what implications will their presence have
for the existing seating arrangements for ACPO and the Home Office?
UNISON supports the continuation of a free collective bargaining body to set the
national pay and conditions of police staff in England and Wales. The Police Staff
Council for England and Wales provides a model for this body, but this would need to
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be reformed and improved in line with our suggestions below to allow it to continue to
prosper into the future.
The Police Staff Council is an effective and successful collective bargaining body. It has
delivered stable industrial relations for the police service since its creation in 1996. It
has a track record in avoiding dispute and operates on the basis of partnership. The
only national industrial action in the police service since 1996 was a single day’s strike
action in 2008 over pensions; a matter which did not come within the scope of the
Police Staff Council.
The Council’s achievements include:
Creation of a single status pay and conditions agreement in 1996
Revision and modernisation of the Police Staff Council Handbook in 2004, also
introducing a wider, more strategic role for the machinery
Collective agreements on annual pay revalorisation for every year since 1996, with
the exception of an ACAS brokered deal in 2000
Employers’ Side expanded in 2002 to encompass the Home Office, with the express
agreement of both Sides of the Council
Partnership approach to collective bargaining, reiterated in the 2005 PSC Joint
Working Agreement
Updating of the PSC 13 Factor Job Evaluation Scheme, plus issuing of good
practice guidance on job evaluation and equal pay audits
Publication of national police staff Standards of Professional Behaviour
Police Staff Council Joint Survey of Job Evaluation and Equal Pay in 2010.
UNISON remains concerned at the continuing absence from the machinery of Kent and
Surrey Police. Their refusal to join the Council deprives our members in those forces of
the protection of national collective bargaining. It also makes impossible the
development of any truly national solution to the problems with pay and grading which
we identified in section 4 above.
The police staff workforce is a national as well as a local workforce. If Government
aspires to drive consistency, efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of policing in
England and Wales, then it needs to be able to deal with the police staff workforce as a
whole, not as 43 different components. Matters such as training and development,
workforce modernisation, conduct, discipline, equality and diversity all demand a
consistent approach across forces. The separate bargaining machinery for the Met
Police and City of London Police also present as barriers to a single national approach
to police staff pay and reward and strategic management of the police service as a
whole.
In addition, the continuing lack of dedicated funding for the Police Staff Council from the
Home Office means that the Council has no ability to properly plan its future workload.
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A copy of the bid which was made to the Home Office for funding in February 2010 is
attached at Appendix F.
UNISON makes clear that we are committed to the continuation of free collective
bargaining for police staff pay and conditions at national level in England and Wales.
We can see no credible arguments for devolving national negotiations to regional or
local level. Indeed, we agree with the Government’s view, set out in its consultation
paper ‘Policing in the 21st Century’ that ‘…there are some things that need to be done
just once, nationally’ in the Police Service, and we include bargaining on pay and
conditions in this definition. We wonder how, in a time of public sector austerity, it could
be argued to the taxpayer that forces should employ more staff than at present to set
up local pay bargaining, rather than deliver front line policing? We are also totally
opposed to any pay review body option, which would replace effective partnership
arrangements with a remote, arm’s-length machinery. The Police Staff Council is a
successful collective bargaining body and we wish to build on its achievements in the
future. We would like to see an expanded Police Staff Council representing all forces in
England and Wales, including those currently outside the machinery. Dedicated
funding for the Council is necessary for it to continue to deliver its services to the Police
Service. Reform to the representation on the Council would have to follow these
developments, taking into account the questions raised above regarding the role and
representation of Police and Crime Commissioners.
5.15 Should the current system whereby individual forces can locally negotiate
police staff pay and conditions remain, be reformed or replaced?
This question is not strictly accurate in its assertion that individual forces can locally
negotiate police staff pay and conditions. The impression given by the question is that
there is wide variation in the terms and conditions of police staff across different forces.
This is not the case. The vast majority of police forces incorporate the Police Staff
Council Handbook in the contracts of their police staff.
What the Handbook provides is: ‘...the nationally agreed pay spine and terms and
conditions of service for police staff which can be varied by local collective agreement’.
This means that unless agreed by UNISON locally, there can be no changes to the
Handbook at force level. Whilst some forces and union branches have agreed changes
to the Handbook, usually improving one section or another, most forces apply the
Handbook in more or less the form that it is presented at national level.
UNISON supports the continuation of the current arrangements whereby local collective
agreements can vary the Police Staff Council Handbook.
5.16 Should police staff pay be negotiated at a national, regional or local level?
UNISON understands this question to be about the process of negotiating the annual
cost of living rise for police staff in England and Wales.
We support the continuation of the current arrangements, whereby this pay rise is
negotiated on behalf of all police staff in England and Wales at the level of the national
negotiating machinery. We take this position for the following reasons:
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It is not an efficient use of public money for individual forces to have to employ more
HR staff to engage in local pay negotiations. These negotiations are time-
consuming and require significant input from both employer and unions.
Force level negotiations would remove the rationale for the national bargaining
machinery and lead to the loss of strategic control over the pay and conditions
agenda by the national stakeholders.
The Home Office would lose any ability to influence the pay and conditions agenda
for police staff.
It is unlikely that the negotiations for police officer pay would ever be devolved to
regional or force level; so to do so for police staff would be both perverse and a
contradiction in terms of the ‘one police service’ concept espoused by both the
Review Team and most of the police stakeholders.
The idea of regional pay bargaining for police staff is an unusual one. As we have
pointed out in other sections of this response, there is little evidence of major
difference in cost of living in different regions of the UK.
The economic indices used to conduct pay negotiations are all set at a national
level, eg. RPI, CPI
5.17 How should the corresponding systems in Scotland and Northern Ireland
relate to the negotiation of police staff pay and conditions in England and
Wales?
UNISON supports the continuation of separate bargaining on pay and conditions for
Scotland. Our police staff members in Scotland are facing major changes to force
structures in the next few years, with the creation of a single police force the likely
outcome. This is likely to lead to the harmonisation of pay and conditions for all police
staff in Scotland. UNISON Scotland sees this as the priority, rather than any aim of
bringing police staff in Scotland into a UK bargaining forum for police staff.
5.18 What role should Police and Crime Commissioners have in determining or
negotiating police staff pay and conditions?
UNISON anticipates that whatever national body emerges to represent the interests of
Commissioners will replace the Association of Police Authorities on the Employers’
Side of the Police Staff Council. In this way, Commissioners will be able to influence
the negotiating agenda alongside the other parties in the tripartite relationship. Police
and Crime Commissioners will have no powers to ‘determine’ police staff pay and
conditions, given that these are negotiable matters under contracts of employment.
5.19 What role should the Government have in determining or negotiating
police staff pay and conditions?
Please see above answer, which applies equally to the Home Office as for Police and
Crime Commissioners.
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The Home Office was not a founding member of the Police Staff Council and was
invited to join as a result of an initiative from the Trade Union Side. UNISON believed
that it was important for the Government to be represented on the Employers Side in
order for the full tripartite structure to be involved in key negotiations. The inclusion of
the Home Office has been a positive influence on the business of the Council and
UNISON would support the continuing presence of the Home Office on any reformed
Police Staff Council negotiating body. There is, of course, no power available to the
Home Office to ‘determine’ police staff pay and conditions and UNISON cannot
envisage any circumstances in which this would be acceptable to our members.
Any suggestion to regionalise or localise police staff pay and conditions would remove
any justification for Home Office presence on any machinery.
5.20 How should any new system for police staff be introduced and phased in?
Please see answer to question 2.45 above for our views on this question.
5.21 Should a single negotiating body be established to determine or negotiate
both police officer and police staff pay? If so, please explain how it should
work and how it should be phased in?
UNISON is taking a motion to our 2011 Police and Justice Conference which asks for a
mandate to explore the pros and cons of a single table negotiating body for police staff
and police officers. A copy of the motion is attached at Appendix H.
There are considerable barriers to the establishment of such a single table as things
stand; in particular:
The fact that police officer pay and conditions are set by statute, and police staff by
negotiation
The power of determination over police officer pay and conditions by the Home
Secretary, and the absence of any such determination in relation to police staff pay
and conditions
The ability of police staff to take industrial action and the prohibition on police
officers from doing likewise
The absence from the Police Staff Council of the Met, City of London, Kent and
Surrey Police forces
The difference in the devolved nations’ approach to pay and conditions for officers
and staff
Notwithstanding these potential barriers, UNISON is willing to consider the option of a
single table, subject to decisions at our conference in October 2011.
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8. Conclusion
UNISON reiterates that we are ready and willing to enter substantive talks on the
reform and modernisation of police staff pay and reward. We have set out again in this
submission the deep structural problems that beset the current arrangements for our
members’ pay. Until or unless these are addressed in the outcome of this Review,
UNISON will struggle to engage our members in the reform process which needs to
unfold.
The outcome of the Independent Review provides an ideal opportunity to usher in the
process of reform. However, the success of any talks that are initiated from the Review
will depend on the willingness of all the parties to the negotiations to address the
structural problems we have identified.
UNISON has been calling for a national solution to these problems for a long time now,
but there has been a disappointing lack of buy-in from other stakeholders to our vision.
We accept that negotiating a new settlement on police staff pay will not result in the
achievement of all of our aims and objectives. However, we are clear that for us to
promote the process it will need to include engagement on a national pay and grading
outcome for police staff in England and Wales. We refer to the NHS and Probation pay
models in this respect and the particular advantages they provide to a process of linking
pay to skills and competence.
Performance related pay has had its day. It is a flawed system that is rejected by all
police stakeholders and should be abandoned across the police service with immediate
effect.
UNISON endorses the ‘one police service’ principle that governs the work of the
Review team. Although nominally supported by other stakeholders in the police
service, UNISON needs to see evidence that this principle will be held to in the working
out of the Review outcomes. If a south east allowance is good enough for police
officers, it is good enough for our members; if police officers are to retain national pay
grades, then our members expect nothing less; if police officers are to get an ‘x-factor’
pay element, our members deserve the same principle to apply to them and if all police
officers remain covered by the same negotiating machinery then police staff demand
the same for the whole of the workforce. If ‘one police service’ is to become a reality,
there needs to be action, rather than just the continuation of fine words.
UNISON is open to the possibility of an eventual single table covering the entire police
workforce. Whether we can deliver this vision will depend on the way in which the
recommendations of Parts 1 and 2 of the Independent Review unfold during the
negotiating process. If police staff perceive that their second class status in the service
is going to continue, and their terms and conditions simply attacked, we will struggle to
keep our eyes fixed on medium to long terms goals around pay reform.
We hope that the Review Team has the courage to recommend some truly
groundbreaking outcomes to modernise police staff pay and reward. We believe that
this must include a national pay and grading scheme covering all police staff in all
police forces in England and Wales under the same negotiating body.
9 IDS Research Paper on Regional Pay
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10 Appendices
A UNISON Survey of Comparative Police Staff Pay Rates 2010
B NHS Agenda for Change: A Summary
C Probation Service Pay Reform Package
D UNISON Letter to Nick Herbert: Police Staff Employment Context post-
Commissioners
E Agenda for Change: A UNISON Guide to the Knowledge & Skills
Framework
F Police Staff Council Bid for Home Office Funding for the PSC
G UNISON Police and Justice Executive Motion to 2011 UNISON Police and
Justice Conference.
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