Met Police accused of ‘undermining’ other police forces with £5000 transfer bonuses for officers

Police and crime commissioners fear smaller forces will not be able to compete with offer

New police recruits after their inspection by former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick during her last Passing Out parade (PA )

The Metropolitan Police has been accused of “undermining” other forces by attempting to attract officers from outside the capital with £5,000 bonuses.

A month before Britain’s largest force was put into special measures, it announced that it was offering new “financial incentives” to entice officers to transfer in and make experienced officers stay.

A one-off cash bonus of £5,000 is being offered to serving constables from other regional forces who join, as well as to existing police staff, voluntary special constables and PCSOs willing to become uniformed constables.

Police and crime commissioners (PCCs) have voiced concern that the move will drain forces that cannot compete with the offer.

Festus Akinbusoye, the PCC for Bedfordshire, called the programme “fundamentally wrong”.

“We work so damn hard to recruit to meet our recruitment target and we did, and it feels like the Met are being allowed to undermine our efforts because of their superior financial power,” he told a press conference in London.

“This is going to cause a lot of problems for several police forces. When they start offering this £5,000 we end up creating a case where other police forces have to try to find a way to match this to retain their officers, or they have to be willing to just lose them.”

Mr Akinbusoye voiced concern that an influx into the Met Police could “weaken” neighbouring forces, adding: “That doesn’t make the Met safer, we’re supposed to be in a collaborative national policing environment … it causes an amount of distrust between police chiefs because there was a moratorium on this kind of thing.”

He voiced hope that the government would “step in” to stop any adverse impact on wider policing.

Steve Turner, the PCC for Cleveland, called the move “ridiculous”, adding: “Allowing the Met to pay bonuses to joiners while the forces around it can’t is creating a rod for our own back.”

The announcement in May is understood to have angered some long-serving officers, who have been hit by a national pay freeze and are not eligible for bonuses.

Scotland Yard is initially making the offer to police who can join by December this year, but forces across England and Wales are still racing to meet the government’s recruitment targets.

When he became prime minister, Boris Johnson announced that 20,000 extra officers would be recruited in three years, aiming to replace those lost during a decade of Conservative-led austerity programmes.

But because of the number of officers resigning and retiring, an estimated 50,000 recruits have to be brought in to produce the net increase.

A National Audit Office report said the government’s initial recruitment drive was boosted by the fact that fewer officers resigned during the Covid pandemic.

But it said that 14 forces are having to be “supported” to meet their targets, adding: “The Home Office faces a greater challenge in meeting its year-three target of 8,000 recruits.

“Forces face additional pressures in the final year … around a quarter of the additional officers recruited in 2020 were previously employed by or volunteered with their police force as civilian staff, PCSOs or special constables.”

A Police Federation conference in May was dominated by concerns about officers quitting their jobs over pay freezes, the cost of living and low morale.

An official from the police uplift programme told the event in Manchester that they were seeing “an increased number of people leaving through voluntary resignation” and that some officers recruited since 2019 have already left.

Mr Turner said that requirements for police officers to either have a degree already, or study for one while training, had narrowed the pool of potential recruits.

“Over the next five to 10 years we are going to have inexperienced cohorts of police officers, but the opportunity for culture change is massive,” he added.

Mr Akinbusoye said that a third of Bedfordshire Police officers would still be in their probation period by the end of this year, and “that isn’t unusual”.

“They need managing, mentoring, supervision, training and it’s a totally different cohort of officers, a totally different lifestyle and worldview,” he added. “I embrace that but the challenge is how do you cope with this massive influx of people in a very short period of time.”

The PCC warned of “challenges in maintaining the standard and the quality when you have that many officers coming in”.

He was speaking after a watchdog’s report warned that the uplift programme had “heightened the danger that people unsuited to policing may get through and be recruited”.

Priti Patel commissioned a public inquiry that will look at vetting processes following the murder of Sarah Everard, by serving Met Police firearms officer Wayne Couzens.

A string of scandals, including the photographing of murdered sisters’ bodies, has increased scrutiny of the checks carried out on officers both before and during their service.

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said it was a “significant net loser on transferees” who leave for other forces, adding: “Over the growth period the Met has worked hard to recruit the vast majority of our 9,400 new officers from within London, using the London residency criteria.

“Across the last 12 months we have invested heavily in a new recruitment outreach team, working within and alongside London communities to attract Londoners to a career in policing and we have encouraged more of our own officers who can retire to stay with us.

“It is only in this final uplift year, given the significant impact of the London employment market, we have lifted the London residency criteria and are extending our recruitment reach.”