Don’t say ‘right-ho’ just say ‘yes’

Police officers across the UK will soon have a manual they can consult when using their radios.

esearch has discovered that officers’ have 60 ways of saying ‘yes’ when they are communicating via radio. Instead of saying ‘right-ho’, ‘OK’, ‘all right’ or ‘Roger’, the new manual will advise that a simple ‘yes’ is all that is needed. And instead of saying ‘hold on a moment’, ‘stand by’ should be used.

The guidelines are currently being developed by a team of academics led by Dr Mark Garner of Aberdeen University who said: “Our task is to produce a manual for all police to use, outlining certain words they should use and how they should go about it. At the moment, radio communications are pretty chaotic. There’s a general feeling among officers that radio discipline is poorer than it should be, and the new technology is resulting in even less discipline. Police now have a radio handset very similar to a mobile phone and there’s a great temptation for them to use it like that and chat away. In the old days, reception was pretty chancy, but now it’s so good that people have got sloppy.”

The new manual is expected to be ready in February. It will then be tested by several forces across the UK before being officially adopted in October of this year.