pasted from icwales. 2% of all police funding spent bonuses.

Aug 3 2008 by Andrew Dagnell, Wales On Sunday

POLICE officers patted themselves on the back with bonuses of more than £8m last year, Wales on Sunday can reveal.

All some of them had to do was turn up to work and do their job properly to be rewarded with jackpot pay-outs – funded by the taxpayer.

Our investigation found others can be given extra cash for dealing with dead bodies or working long hours in bad weather.

Bonuses were introduced by police forces five years ago to boost efficiency and fill vacancies. But now the extra salaries are creating massive divides and resentment between Welsh police officers – especially if they don’t make the grade.

There are now calls from the Police Federation, the rank- and-file officers union, to scrap the system completely and spend the spare cash on more beat bobbies.

Chairman Paul McKeever blasted: “The current bonus system is divisive and unfair.

“Every day police officers put their lives on the line to safeguard people and property with disregard for their own safety. How do you put a price on this?”

Using Freedom of Information legislation, we asked Wales’ four police authorities to reveal how much they shelled out in bonuses last year.

Rank-and-file police officers in Wales received an average of £1,050 – higher than the UK average of £938.

The most generous force was South Wales Police, which coughed up more than £3.5m.

Dyfed-Powys Police paid in excess of £1.2m, officers in Gwent were given more than £1.4m and in North Wales bonuses cost the force £1.7m.

Lower-ranking officers benefit from so-called Special Priority Payments of up to £5,000 for taking on difficult jobs or tough-to-fill roles.

On top of that, other bonuses allow them to be paid extra for performing unpleasant duties, such as dealing with corpses – which is worth up to £500 a body.

Officers at the top of their pay scale can also claim up to £1,000, known as a Competence-Related Threshold Payment, if they can prove they are good at their job.

In Wales, superintendents’ bonuses totalled more than £63,000. They are allowed to claim up to £5,000 if they are assigned to particularly tough tasks, such as heading up a murder inquiry.

They can also earn several thousand pounds – up to 5% of their salary – if they perform basic duties well.

Chief constables and their deputies are allowed to boost their salaries by up to 15% if they meet their targets.

Dyfed-Powys and South Wales forces refused to disclose how much extra they gave their chief officers. But North Wales revealed they split £24,000 between controversial chief constable Richard Brunstrom and his deputies and assistants.

Clwyd South MP Martyn Jones – a long-standing critic of Mr Brunstrom – was shocked at our investigation’s findings.

“I’m astonished – I knew nothing about it, and I doubt many of my constituents do.

“It’s outrageous that police officers are profiting from doing jobs they are expected to do.

“The kind of jobs they are being paid extra for are what is expected of police officers, no matter what.

“Being a policeman is a tough job, and they deserve to be properly paid. But I wonder how many other people know nothing about this scheme? It’s just bizarre.”

There has also been criticism that the money is coming out of the public purse. TaxPayers’ Alliance chief executive Matthew Elliott said the majority of the public knew nothing about the bonus system.

He said: “This seems to be an extraordinary amount of money to give in bonuses at a time when there is apparently not enough money to honour even the basic police pay settlement.

“The people who pay for the police and who find themselves at the sharp end of crime should be given the information and democratic power to tailor local police tactics as they wish.

“Some police forces are performing well, and there are undoubtedly some officers who deserve a reward.

“However, with other forces clearly struggling to protect the public adequately, there are serious questions to be asked about why so many bonuses are being paid out across the board.”

Police union leaders told Wales on Sunday they think the system is unfair and should be dropped in favour of a more generous pay rise.

Mr McKeever added: “The scope of duties police officers undertake is vast.

“The fairest mechanism of reward is to abolish the bonuses and special priority payments and have fairer national pay across the board, commensurate with this vital role in society. We will be continuing our fight with the Government to ensure that police officers receive the very best pay deal possible, and not have to be reliant on ad hoc bonuses that some get, but the majority do not.”

The Association of Chief Police Officers workforce modernisation spokesman slammed the fact bonus payments were made to officers simply for carrying out unpleasant jobs.

Mike Craik, who is also Chief Constable of Northumbria, said: “We need to get away from this. A traffic officer comes across a vehicle and the people in it have their heads cut off. My personal view – not everybody would agree – is that is the job. Full stop. Sometimes it’s awful.

“I was a senior investigating officer in London. I have seen the most grisly things you could ever come across but that is the job I signed up to do. My personal view is that it should go to a skills-based system where officers get paid more for the skills they display.

“We want to move to a system where you get paid according to your skills. That is what the future holds.”

A spokesman for South Wales Police, which paid out the most in bonuses, said: “All UK police forces are obliged to follow several Home Office schemes in which officers are given additional payments.

“Police forces are required to allocate 2% of their annual wage bill to fund the Special Priority Payments Scheme – in 2007-08 for South Wales Police this amounted to £2,060,872.

“This amount is set by the Home Office who rule that it cannot be spent on anything else.

“Payments of this kind will always be significantly higher for South Wales Police than other Welsh Forces, because they have more officers than other forces so therefore more are eligible for the payments.

“Being the largest police force in Wales we also have a larger annual budget than the three other forces and therefore the two per cent of the total budget will always be higher.”

Basic pay scales (outside London):

Constable: Starting on £21,534 and rising to £33,810 after 10 years.

Sergeant: Starting on £33,810 and rising to £37,998 after four years.

Inspector: Starting on £43,320 and rising to £46,989 after three years.

Chief Inspectors: Starting on £47,949 and rising to £49,923 after three years.

Superintendents: Starting on £56,274 and rising to £65,565 after five years.

Chief Superintendents: Starting on £67,200 and rising to £71,031 after three years.

Chief Constables, Deputy Chief Constables and Assistant Chief Constables: Salaries vary depending on the size of the force. They range from £115,000 for a small force up to £234,000 for being in charge of the Metropolitan Police.

Nifty piece. The only point I'd make was about your claim that the COI is "strikingly low profile".

I seem to recall that they put on a big film festival in London a year or so ago, showing their best-known ads from the last six decades, which gained acres of newspaper coverage. So they're not exactly secretive.

Their adverts are also some of the best known in British advertising history. So do remember to clunk-click before every trip. And that Charlie says to always tell your parents before you go somewhere.