Update on Response Shifts

Dear Colleague

As you will be aware we have been in negotiations with the force in relation to the proposed shift pattern for Response. We are now in a position to share with you the latest proposal. We believe this to be the best option that we have managed to negotiate. It must be stressed that this is still a proposal and nothing has been agreed, and we are seeking your views at this stage.

You must be aware that when negotiating shift patterns we have to take into account the business need and the work life balance of those officers working the pattern. The police service has to provide 24/7/365 days cover to members of the public who require our services. The Force must therefore ensure they have enough staff on to deal with the demands of calls for service at the appropriate times and in the appropriate places.

The Force Review team examined the demand profile for calls for service and the proposed pattern meets those demands, which means they have had to alter some of the duties that are currently being worked to suit the new pattern. The Federation has, we hope, successfully negotiated to reinstate 8 of the originally proposed lost 12 RD's, which means the proposed new pattern will mean a loss of 4 RD's per year. This is due to the mandatory training that response officers have to undertake, i.e. PSP, MAST, which will be incorporated into training days whereby the whole of response will be released to attend these training days. Unfortunately the best way this could be configured was have this done on what would have been a RD.

As well as reinstating the 8 lost rest days, we have managed to retain 3 RD's after nights, apart from the ones described above which, it is proposed, will only happen twice a year.

The issue of the 0600 starts is based on the need to have patrols available for call for service between 0615 and 0800, this would be a local agreement and would not incur any overtime as per the Winsor Report . The demand profile shows there is a need for this cover and as nights will be leaving their designated patrol area to head back to the patrol hub to book off duty, so of the 127 officers coming on mornings, there will be a need for 10 doubly crewed vehicles to come on early to cover this gap. It is difficult to argue against this proposal as we are aware that RPU have made a number of dry runs to test the timings out if a call for service was to be received at these times. We believe the compromise of having 1/5th of the morning shift coming early as opposed to whole shift is the best we could achieve. No officers will begin a 0600 start from a RD and those who do perform this duty will finish at 1400.

It is proposed that there are 12 late finishes which go into a RD, 8 of these finish at Midnight or before.

You will notice that there are what is deemed a short change from a Late shift finishing at 2100 and back on duty the following day at 0800. Whilst this is not desirable it does conform to the Working time Directive in that it gives 11 hours between shifts. This arrangement can only be rectified by losing more RD's so that the right number of patrols are on at the right times. It was felt this was a better alternative, but we will take on board your views.

Due to the force IT we are unable to add an attachment to our batch emails so to access the new shift pattern please use the link below which will take you to the document on the federation website.

We would welcome your views on the proposed pattern which we will feed back into the review team. If you would like to recommend any changes to the pattern then you must provide evidence as to why you think it would work so that we can inform the review team.