Metropolitan Police Federation

Officers are target of bizarre health apartheid

Metropolitan Police officers have become subject to a bizarre form of discrimination.

Policing is a physically, and frequently psychologically, demanding job. Notwithstanding that, the Metropolitan Police Service has set a target for time off through sickness at just 6.5 days per officer per year.

This in itself is not a problem for officers - indeed, with a current average of 6.9 days a year off through illness, they have almost cracked it.

What bemuses them is why community support officers, whose duties and responsibilities are far less onerous, are expected to be more prone to sickness - their target for absence through ill-health is 7.8 days a year (actual average time off is an average 8.5 days).

Stranger still is the target for civil staff, who have no policing duties at all. This stands at a full 8.7 days (actual number: 9.3 days).

Surely, what is deemed reasonable for police officers - and, we re-iterate, there is no complaint about their target - should be reasonable for everyone else.

This health apartheid must end.