Wasted money as police face cuts

LONDON faces having fewer police

Kategori	: English
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Tarih	: 29 Temmuz 2010 15:50

By Figen Gunes and Suzan Nuri

LONDON faces having fewer police due to cuts in funding despite the Met Police spending thousands of pounds on a recruitment campaign last year that yielded just 64 new officers.

According to information gathered under the Freedom of Information Act, London Turkish Gazette has learned that £88,484 was spent on a recruitment campaign in January and February 2009 but only 64 people were taken on. This is in spite of a further 136 people passing the recruitment process and then being told they had no jobs due to ‘reduced levels of recruitment’.

The shocking statistics mean that there would be just an extra two officers for the 32 London boroughs, despite the need for extra policing in the run up to the Olympic Games in 2012.

The Metropolitan Police Authority, who have responsibility for ensuring the Met Police is efficient, effective and fair, told London Turkish Gazette that it was disappointed that external applicants had to be excluded from jobs.

A spokeswoman said “The MPA were extremely disappointed that it became necessary to terminate so many of these external applicants but, in essence, this was as a result of far fewer police officers resigning or retiring from the police service than anticipated rather than a sudden change in the overall number of police officers required.”

“As you will appreciate, the intention of the event was to recruit far more than 64 officers.”

Mayor of London Boris Johnson’s office said that the fall in officers willing to leave the police service had ‘seriously impacted on recruitment levels. This has resulted in many more candidates than projected vacancies. The Head of Recruitment and Selection at the Metropolitan Police has expressed his regret at the current situation but feels that it is one that Is beyond his control.”

The Met Police have now proposed a new model for recruitment which represents a significant shift from the traditional approach to recruiting and training police officers who until now have undertaken training for 25 weeks upon appointment. It would utilise academic and experiential learning acquired from a newly developed Metropolitan Special Constabulary (MSC) training programme, all of which will be delivered and tested prior to application and appointment as a police constable.

Future applicants would have to complete an accredited learning qualification in law and policing whilst performing a level of operational duty that will ultimately allow independent patrol status.

This means that those who went through the recruitment process just a year ago will have to go through a new process as their pass marks have only been extended until 2011. The MPS say that a ‘waiting list’ of successful applicants would not be maintained, calling into question how much future recruitment processes will cost tax-payers.

However the MPS said they “came to the difficult decision to terminate all external applications as police recruitment is unlikely to resume in the foreseeable future.

“Each applicant was telephoned by a member of MPS staff and personally advised of the situation. All external applicants have been offered the opportunity to join the police service as members of the MSC or have their application transferred to any other police force that is recruiting. If they opt for the MSC their applications will be prioritised.”

One of those affected is 22 year-old PCSO Serkan Djemal from Haringey.

He told London Turkish Gazette that all recruitment had stopped until 2011 at the earliest.

“I was told that I would have to become a Special Constable if I wanted to join the Met,” he said, adding that Special Constables will be recruited as he believed there is not enough time to train regular officers up in time for the Olympics.

James Cleverly, London Assembly Member for Bexley and Bromley said he sympathised with the recruits caught up in the recruitment process.

"I have a huge amount of sympathy for those recruits caught up in the Met’s recruitment freeze. The Met police’s decision to freeze recruitment was a very unfortunate one-off consequence of the financial situation we all find ourselves in and there are perhaps lessons that can be learnt form this episode.

“I will be keeping an eye on all decisions taken to reduce the costs of policing.  However a real area of concern for us all should be the high number of  police officers on long term sick leave or on restricted and recuperative duties.

“I really think the current emphasis on police numbers is  a diversion. 

The figures I have found show that we get a distorted impression of London policing levels when as many as 14 per cent of police officers in some boroughs are not working on full capacity.

“The real challenge ahead of us is to ensure London gets the quality of service it needs."

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