Secret policemen’s bonuses

Why are so many police forces refusing to provide details of the bonuses paid to their chief constables?

Regulations under the Local Government Statue no 3322, will compel every force to publish all remuneration details of their highest paid staff, including amounts spent on expenses and bonuses in their next accounts.

At the Bureau we have been investigating bonuses within the police force for several months. Using Freedom of Information requests we have asked each of the 43 constabularies about such payments to their senior officers.

No answer

Many forces have refused to give us the details about this contentious issue. (See the table below)

In an attempt to force the police to provide the information we went to the Information Commission. We discovered that others had already brought the issue to the ICO, but no decision had been made.

No information

The Bureau pressed further.

We wanted to know how many complaints had been made but we were told that to obtain this information we would need to send in an FOI request to the Information Commissioner.

It is clear the police are being anything but transparent.

Hidden payments

This is all the greater a concern when you realise that the police receive ‘extra payments’, often undisclosed.

These include mortgage payments private health insurance, private car costs, private school fees, honorarium payments and private membership of clubs.

These extra payments are above and beyond the current national pay scales that have been centrally determined by the Police Negotiating Body (PNB), and remain not properly regulated.

Bonus payments are in the spotlight. Keeping them secret is only going to make them more contentious.

Good Cop, Bad Cop