PSNI officers working almost a day each month for free

Falling budgets have left officers in Northern Ireland working almost a day for free every month, new research has shown.

The Police Federation for Northern Ireland’s (PFNI) ‘Goodwill’ survey has found that nearly every single officer routinely works paid or unpaid overtime.

Almost 90 per cent reported missing family or social events due to working overtime, and eight in ten have had to cancel or miss appointments.

Two fifths of officers reported missing most – if not all – of their daily rest breaks, and more than a fifth said they got less than eight hours sleep because of overtime on more than 20 occasions over the three-month poll.

PFNI Chairman Mark Lindsay said: “The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is under-resourced and under-staffed. The consequence of this is that officers are working flat out to keep the service ticking over.

“Indeed, over 90 per cent said that even when they’re off duty, they’re answering calls on police-related matters.

“This highlights the extent to which policing in Northern Ireland has become reliant on the goodwill of officers.”

The PFNI’s findings seemingly contradict a Trades Union Congress (TUC) study published in February, which showed that the average unpaid overtime worked in Northern Ireland is 7.7 hours per week.

According to the TUC, the public sector routinely works longer unpaid hours than the private sector – making up a quarter of the national workforce but producing a third of unpaid overtime.

The top spot was taken by teachers and other education professionals, with more than half working the equivalent of 11.9 hours each week for free.

These were followed by financial institution managers (11.2 hours), production managers (10.3 hours) and managers in finance and marketing companies (10.1 hours).

Jude Helliker, PSNI Head of Human Resources said: “We take the welfare of our officers and staff extremely seriously and we welcome this Police Federation survey as a further opportunity to highlight the work that members of the police service deliver on a daily basis to keep people safe.

“Earlier this year, PSNI commissioned a service-wide engagement and wellbeing survey of our officers and staff. Since then, we have established a working group to address issues, specifically including how we manage officer overtime and dealing with leave requests and rest days.

“We are mindful that unplanned overtime and cancelled rest days are issues that can affect personal lives and work/life balance and in recent weeks we have implemented a number of new measures to ensure that officers and staff are able to plan their work and personal lives better.

“We will continue to work closely with the Police Federation on a day to day basis to address both their concerns and those of their members and this survey will help us focus those discussions even further.

“Despite the various ongoing challenges that we face, our officers continue to go the extra mile every day, working with communities and partners to deliver a policing service to keep people safe. Policing is a vocation and one which is challenging but ultimately rewarding for those who have a passion for serving their communities.”