Met officers should be given a near 10 per cent pay rise, Sir Mark Rowley said on Tuesday as he warned that his force is to miss its target for boosting numbers because of the difficulty in finding new recruits.
The Met Commissioner said he feared the force — which was originally hoping to boost its officer numbers to 36,500 as part of the Government’s 20,000 nationwide increase in police numbers — would “be up to 1,000 officers short” by April, when the target was due to be met. He said the reason was that the “pool of potential candidates is reducing” and that a big increase in police pay “that is close to the current rate of inflation” was needed to attract recruits and ensure that talented officers stayed with the Met.
Sir Mark’s call for what he admitted was an “exceptional” rise is the latest in a long line of large public sector pay demands to confront the Government and comes at a time when his force continues to be engulfed in controversy about the conduct of some of its officers in the wake of the convictions of serial rapist David Carrick and Sarah Everard’s murderer Wayne Couzens. Both were serving Met officers at the time. Sir Mark has warned that he expects to see a further “two to three” of his officers a week in court for other crimes in the coming weeks and said that despite an ongoing purge of his ranks, he still has around 500 employed who were unsuitable to come into contact with the public.
The Commissioner insisted, however, that although “some may question” his call for higher pay, a large inflationary increase was needed to reward and attract the calibre of officer that his force needed.
He said he was being “ruthless” in removing rogue officers but also needed “to recruit, develop, motivate and retain the talent of tens of thousands of fantastic men and women who desperately want to rebuild the trust of Londoners”. Sir Mark added: “This is becoming increasingly hard — perhaps not surprising when a cost-of-living crisis lands on top of a 17 per cent real-terms decrease in pay over the past 10 years for front-line officers.”
Sir Mark said that real pay for front-line police had fallen by 17 per cent in the past decade and that any increase must come from additional government funding because officer numbers would have to be cut if the money came from existing budgets.
“Officers should receive a pay award that is close to the current rate of inflation,” the Commissioner said, making a request which, if implemented in line with the current inflation rate of 10.1 per cent, would leave the Government with a bill of around £200 million.
He added: “Further difficulty comes in the context of London’s current pay landscape—I know others are also struggling to grow. We have formally submitted our evidence to the [Home Office’s independent] Pay Review Remuneration Board… a recommendation which I think some may question, that officers should receive a pay award that is close to the current rate of inflation. This is not about benevolence or sentimentality to my officers but simply about being calmly business-like about what it will take for me to deliver the quality of policing that Londoners deserve.”
Sir Mark said higher pay should be accompanied by reform so that officers’ salaries were not “based more on rewarding how long someone has been with us, rather than their skills, performance and values”.
He added that any increase for officers should be matched by a “comparable” increase for the Met’s civilian staff.
Ministers are likely to be reluctant to find such a large sum at a time of public spending constraints and will also be dismayed by the Met’s failure to recruit all the officers intended under the nationwide “uplift” programme introduced to boost police numbers by 20,000. The number of Met officers, which currently stands at 34,340, is still at a record high. The starting salary for a Pc is around £33,500.
