Uniformed police doing desk jobs despite Mayor’s promises

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 16th Oct 2002

Trained police officers are being forced to do desk duties because the Metropolitan Police Service is failing to retain its civilian staff.

The London Assembly’s Budget Committee, chaired by Sally Hamwee, heard today that although the Police Service is on target to meet recruit 1,000 extra officers in 2002/03, 160 have been allocated to ‘support roles’ in human resources. Furthermore, London boroughs are, on average, missing almost eight percent of their civilian staff. This is despite assurances from Mayor Ken Livingstone in September 2001 that ‘in the near future, the civilianisation of 1,000 admin posts (currently occupied by trained police officers) in the Police Service would release police officers back to active service’.

A recent document from the Metropolitan Police Authority’s Human Resources Committee showed that, among other things, the culmination of a £10 million reduction in the budget for civilian staff and the moratorium on recruitment meant the impact on boroughs has been to create a process of decivilianisation of some civil staff roles.

Sally Hamwee said: "The Mayor has a blunt target of additional uniformed officers. Our question for him will be whether this simplistic and superficially attractive strapline translates into the most effective way of delivering good operational policing. Trained officers should do the policing jobs only they can do - admin and paperwork that can be done by civilians should be done by civilians."