South Yorkshire Police Federation criticise 'licence to practise' for officers citing already unsafe workloads
Plans for all officers to require a ‘licence to practise’ or face losing their jobs has been criticised by the Police Federation, saying officers are already routinely pulled off training as it is.
Police officers in England and Wales will be required to hold and renew a licence similar to doctors and lawyers under plans unveiled by the Home Office said on Saturday (January 24).
Every officers will be required to hold a licence to keep their jobs, which requires they prove they have the skills to tackle issue like violence against women and girls, neighbourhood policing and leadership expectations.
The plans are part of a raft of reforms that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has called the biggest shake-up in the police service in 200 years.
Today (January 25), the South Yorkshire Police Federation echoed concerns raised by the main organisation, claiming that officers are already routinely pulled from mandatory training to cover “unsafe workloads.”
The Federation said officers need “pay, training, time and support” first.
A spokeswoman for the organisation said: "Everyone wants professional policing, but that requires pay, training, time and support.
"Officers are routinely pulled off mandatory training to plug gaps, work rest days to stay afloat, and carry workloads no-one would call safe.
"We will await the detail of the white paper but these issues need to be fixed."
In stronger terms, the Metropolitan Police Federation - the largest branch of the organisation, which represents more than 30,000 rank-and-file officers across London - called the plans “a time consuming, expensive, box-ticking exercise.”
General secretary of Metropolitan Police Federation, Matt Cane, said in a statement to the Press Association: "Officers in London will have more questions than they have answers on these proposals.
"We all want the highest standards in policing but we fear this will be an expensive, time-consuming, tick-box exercise and become bureaucratic and burdensome on the already stretched MPS (Metropolitan Police Service).
"The Metropolitan Police Federation can assure colleagues that we will be seeking answers to these many questions as the process proceeds."
But former chief constable of Gloucestershire Dr Tim Brain told PA he was also concerned about the plans.
He said: "I think it might address incompetency - officers who should have never been recruited and then can't hack the job. If that's the case, you've got an officer there who should have never got into the system.
"(Dealing with) people who don't have the necessary integrity, or lose the integrity that they once had, has got to be the product of effective internal investigation... so that when things look like they're not right, these are challenged and explored.
"If you have to wait for the renewal of a licence, that seems to me that you're probably delaying effective intervention. It's not a bad idea, but it's not a panacea."
Ms Mahmood is expected to outline the sweeping reforms in the white paper, "From local To National: A New Model For policing", on Monday.