More support for police officers out on assignments

The county’s federation secretary Garry Smith was present at the annual conference session, ‘Mutual Aid: a postcode lottery for members’.

Garry said: ‘There will be a new framework that will look at a set of guidelines all forces will adopt for mutual aid deployments. So that’s things considering officer wellbeing, food, accommodation, as well as such important things as overnight allowance, and pay and rewards for those officers deployed out of force.

‘It also looks at the length of deployments, so the agreement is no deployment will be longer than nine days, and there’ll be no rest days within that period, to avoid any issues with rest days being held in reserve.

‘Also, travelling days are duty days, rather than interfering with officers’ rest days. And that they have rest days at the end of that period of time.

‘This framework will support our members over the coming months and years.’

Police federation treasurer Simon Kempton said at the session: ‘Mutual aid is becoming so prevalent – it is important we get this right for our members and also the public.’

National Board member Steve Taylor said: ‘With these planning operations, being involved from the early stages will allow lessons learned from previous deployments – around accommodation standards, food provision and the wellbeing of our officers.

‘We need to understand that many, if not all, of our members are volunteers and the public won’t see that.’