High cost of illness for West Mercia police
Wednesday 1st December 2010, 7:39PM GMT.
West Mercia Police lost 173,596 working hours in a year due to sick leave, official Government figures reveal.
Data published by Policing Minister Nick Herbert shows the 2,391-strong force, which covers Shropshire, lost an average of 73 hours per police officer in 2009/10. It also lost 144,268 hours as a result of other police staff taking time off due to illness, including police community support officers and traffic wardens.
The figures were released in a written parliamentary answer in response to a probe by Tory Priti Patel, MP for the new constituency of Witham in Essex.
Across England and Wales, they reveal almost nine million hours were lost – an average of 61 per police officer.
A West Mercia force spokeswoman said: “In the last financial year 2009/10 police officer absence was low in West Mercia with an average of nine days per officer per annum.
Initiatives
“The force is committed to continually monitor levels of sickness absence and has a number of ongoing initiatives designed to assist officers and staff in returning to work as soon as possible.”
The force’s frontline services will no doubt be stretched further when it axes 300 jobs to save up to £10 million over the next three years.
The force says 98 police officers will lose their jobs, but the number of bobbies on the beat will not be affected. Another 189 civilian staff will lose their jobs.
A recent study showed public sector workers take three more sick days a year on average than those in the private sector – and stress is the biggest cause. The average time in the public sector because of sickness is 9.6 days per employee per year, compared with 6.6 days in private sector services.
By London Reporter Sunita Patel
UK News
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People do get sick, it is just a sad fact of life. The fact that public sector workers are more likely to be able to take time off is a reflection of the fact that their employers accept sickness as a reality and don’t stop paying them. Not paying when someone is sick is a little punitive in my view. Hopefully the private sector will catch up one day instead of having to leave people to struggle on the pittance that is SSP…
On the subject of saving money, the Police are just as important as the NHS and should have been saved from such severe cuts. West Mercia force covers a population of over a million people.
They’re trying to cut £10,000,000 over 3 years
Rather than losing 300 police staff I’d happily pay an extra £3.33p per year. Lets round it up to a fiver per year as obviously some of the population will be too young to be of employment age. Still 45 odd pence a month is hardly a lot of extra money.
And before you say anything yes my family have been hit quite hard by the recession with a job loss and it is painful… But the cost of keeping the force fully funded is giving up about 1.5 pints of beer per person per annum. And it’d be better for your health :-)
As the local tax payers and people who use our Police service why have we not been offered that option?
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Statistics can tell lots of differing stories, if West Mercia is like most forces you will find that sickness levels of police officers is usually less, sometimes half that of than civilian staff, so unless the officers have to drop back to cover civilian posts front line effectiveness is not an issue.
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