Performance pay and short-term cyber experts 'should be part of modernising the police'

Radical plans to modernise the police by linking pay to performance and recruiting outside experts on short-term contracts have been proposed by the police chief in charge of standards.

Mike Cunningham, who heads the service’s professional body, said it was time for a “significant review” of the traditional model of policing where pay has been based on length of service.

He said major reform of the UK’s 125,000 police officers’ pay, work patterns, recruitment and deployment would be “quid pro quo” for extra funding from the Treasury.

Sajid Javid, the home secretary, is currently locked in talks with Chancellor Philip Hammond for extra funding to help tackle a surge in violent crime and has hinted he is confident of success.

But Mr Cunningham, head of the College of Policing, warned it would not be a “blank cheque” and police would have to shift towards a performance-related model, an approach seen as controversial by many beat officers, and open up the service to outsiders.  

“When the government talks about pay reform, everyone knows they are talking about breaking the connection between length of service and pay progression which is the current model.

"Instead, it would reward officers according to their contribution,” he told The Telegraph in an interview.

“Police would not progress through the pay scales unless they have satisfactorily achieved what is required of them in their role.

“I am very supportive of a model that looks at having effective individual performance arrangements in policing which is currently not the case.

“Individuals can have the benefit of being clear about what is expected of them, being told when they are doing a good job or when they are not doing a good job in an honest and supportive way.

“Officers would be accredited for the training and skills they have and the whole area of professional development would be taken far more seriously than it has been to date. The development of staff in policing has historically been seen as a cost rather than an investment.”

Although not explicitly performance-related pay, it was more like PRP than the current model, he said.

Mr Cunningham, a former HM inspector of police and chief constable, said the shake-up would  bring short-term entrants into the police which, he believed, would appeal to the millennial generation who wanted a more flexible approach to work and careers than their parents.

“Historically people came in as a police constable and stayed for 30 years until they were tipped out at the end. This model has served policing well but I think it is time for significant review.

“We have to think about how we refine the way new skills are brought into the police. It might be a chief constable needs people with lots of digital and cyber skills. How do they bring them into the police for a short period of time not necessarily as police officers or maybe as police officers.”

Mr Cunningham said there had been some moves to direct entry with senior ranks opened up to outsiders, which was currently being evaluated.

“The police service needs to be responsive to [the millennial generation] to make sure it is sufficiently attractive for talent from all backgrounds,” he said.

Police faced new demands from increasingly complex crimes, often cyber-related such as child abuse and fraud, which meant forces needed to rethink their capabilities and recruit officers and staff with the skills to tackle them, said Mr Cunningham.

Mr Cunningham said ethnic minority officers and women were still under-represented: “That challenges a number of things around how people are recruited and how they are attracted to policing. The service needs to do much more.”

He claimed policing was also being transformed by offering graduates and school-leavers alternative routes into the service including new apprenticeships where trainees secured a degree qualification on the job.