Page 4 - Federation magazine: December 2016 / January 2017

Interim chairman’s introduction
Low morale:
a sign of the
times?
Photo courtesy Express & Star In the police service, we had ended 2015
on a bit of a positive with the then
By Tom Cuddeford, interim chairman of Chancellor announcing in his autumn
West Midlands Police Federation spending review that there would be no
more cuts to police budgets, much to the
It hardly seems possible that we are now shock of everyone in policing, I think.
nearing the end of the year, but what a But, let’s not forget, this was in the wake of the latest annual Police Federation survey
year it has been! I am not sure that many of the terrorist attacks in Paris in November on officer pay and morale. The results make
people would have predicted a vote for last year so while the news was welcomed it
Brexit this time last year, or that Theresa also highlighted the realistic prospect of
May would become Prime Minister and I am similar atrocities being committed here in
even more confident that most would not the UK.
have expected Donald Trump to make it to The Federation, continually calling for an
the White House. It has certainly been a year end to police cuts and highlighting the need
of political surprises. for more officers and particularly more
firearms officers, began the year calling for
more officers to be trained in the use of
Tasers and for a more extensive roll-out of
the devices.
The reasoning was two-fold: police
officers need to be equipped to protect the
public but they also need to be equipped to
protect themselves. And this was to become
a theme of the year – the need for better
protection for police officers.
On the back of the highly successful
initiative in Hampshire Constabulary, where
the Force and the Federation branch worked
together to tackle assaults on officers and
staff, the Police Federation of England and
Wales is planning a nationwide campaign
on this issue.
We have already launched our own
campaign, see Pages 6 – 8, and will continue
to lobby our MPs to ensure that more is
done to protect police officers and ensure
04 federation December 2016/January 2017
their safety. An attack on a police officer is
an attack on society. We cannot just stand
back and watch as certain members of our
communities treat officers like punchbags.
Just as we were finalising our press
release on this issue, we received the results
interesting reading particularly when a
staggering 86 per cent of West Midlands
officers reporting low personal morale said
this was because of the way the police are
treated in general. Perhaps the rising
number of assaults on the police has
something to do with this?
The other factors our officers said had
impacted on their morale were pay and
benefits, including their pension (70.2 per
cent), treatment by senior managers (39.1
per cent), the day to day job role (40.4 per
cent), workload and responsibilities (49.3 per
cent), opportunities for development and
promotion (54.4 per cent), health and
wellbeing and work-life balance (both 54.6
per cent).
In all, 57.4 per cent of rank and file West
Midlands Police officers said their personal
morale is currently low while 92.6 per cent
felt morale within the Force was low.
We ranked 11 out of the 42 forces to take
part in the survey which means there are 31
forces with a smaller proportion of
respondents reporting low morale. However,
it is worth noting that last year 69.5 per cent
of our members reported low personal
morale in this annual survey so there does
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