Tayside Police to offer voluntary redundancy to staff
Tayside Police staff are to be offered voluntary redundancy and early retirement in a bid to slash costs in the wake of an expected budget cut of 13% over three years.
- By Richard Burdge and Grant Smith
- Published in the Courier : 16.11.10
- Published online : 16.11.10 @ 01.14pm
The widely-anticipated step was approved by members of Tayside Joint Police Board at a meeting in the council chambers in Perth.
The offers will be made to members of the 626-strong police staff, although targets for the number of job reductions which may be sought, or in which areas, have not yet been made.
It is the intention of the force to publish a voluntary redundancy and early retirement scheme offer by the end of November and to invite applications.
Following discussions in private about the terms of early severance, Chief Constable Justine Curran said, "After the chancellor announced the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review for the UK on October 20 we are now waiting for the cabinet secretary for finance to make a more detailed announcement on the Scottish budget.
"The final allocation of money for Scottish councils is unlikely to be known until early December.
"In the meantime we are looking to identify a cash reduction in the force budget of 13% over three years, which equates to approximately £9 million, with a further £3 million savings to be identified to pay for the last year of the three-year pay deal for officers and staff.
"Some people may believe the voluntary redundancy move is unnecessary when the details of the spending review are not known.
However, as chief constable, I have previously indicated that as an organisation we will need to be smaller if we are to balance our books over the coming years.
"On this basis I feel that it is in our staff's best interests to be offered a voluntary redundancy scheme at this time.
"This is being offered in advance of us having to invoke compulsory redundancies once the full impact of the comprehensive spending review has been assessed."
Inevitable
Councillor Ian Mackintosh, convener of Tayside Joint Police Board, said, "Sadly, with the scale of expenditure reduction we expect to see and with 85% of Tayside Police spending being people, it is inevitable that staff numbers will need to reduce, although we are committed to maintaining front line policing as much as we can.
"It is our intention to achieve this with as little pain to individuals and the organisation as possible, and at the same time achieve value for money."
Earlier the board approved a request to grant to the chief constable the delegated power over compulsory retirement of officers.
She assured them this would not be used to retire huge numbers of police, but it would afford her the flexibility to retire some officers who had served for 30 years of pensionable service.
Malcolm Gibbs, secretary of the Tayside branch of the Police Federation, said he was extremely disappointed by the move towards cutting staff numbers through the so-called A19 regulation, which can be used to force officers to retire after 30 years' service.
"The decision itself does not surprise me and I understand fully that the chief constable may still decide not to implement this regulation, depending of course on the Scottish budget announcement later this week," he said.
"What does frustrate me greatly is the fact that we put considerable thought into the paper that we, the local federation and the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents, submitted opposing this measure.
"The convener and the elected members have had this communication for some time yet they appeared to give absolutely no consideration whatsoever to its content."
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