Blogs from Police &   
other Emergency Service Workers  

On Sunday 9th June there will be a Cream Tea afternoon held from 2pm - 4pm at Braishfield Recreational Ground, Romsey. Tickets cost just £5 per person which includes two fresh scones, jam, clotted cream and bottomless cups of tea!

Even the rain won't stop this event happening as an alternative place has been set up incase of wet weather. All proceeds will go to Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance, so to buy your tickets to help raise money for this vital service, please telephone Wendy Jeffery on 01794 367282 (after 6pm)

The Met “gagged” the Leveson Inquiry from revealing intelligence that a very senior former police officer passed on sensitive information to the News of the World, the Standard reveals today.

The force claimed a “public interest immunity certificate” to ban the disclosure of a report that alleged the officer was obtaining highly confidential information on decisions taken by Lord Blair when he was Commissioner.

The classified document, which the Met withheld from the Leveson Inquiry until after it could have been usefully raised in the public hearings, suggested the officer — who is not named for legal reasons —passed the leak on to the tabloid for money.

When it was finally passed to the inquiry, Scotland Yard claimed “public interest immunity” which prevented Lord Justice Leveson from referring to it in public or considering it for the conclusions in his landmark report into inappropriate relationships between the press...

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Serious concerns have been raised about the mental well-being of custody sergeants after a national study revealed that working conditions are forcing many to consider quitting the Police Service.

A study covering half of all 2,000 custody sergeants in England and Wales found that factors including the pressures of peak times, inability to take breaks and a lack of communication with senior managers were making life intolerable in the worst cases.

Crucially, just over 60 per cent were exhibiting the worrying signs of high emotional exhaustion – or burnout. Of these, four out of ten were considering throwing in the towel on their police career and nearly a quarter were looking for a new role within the service.

The survey, which was conducted by Dr Jonathan Houdmont of Nottingham University, also found that the problem had been steadily worsening over the last two decades.

The academic announced his results at the recent Police Federation of England and Wales conference and is now planning on...

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Good old Walsall Police Station. We’ve been working out of the station on Green Lane ever since we left our former address on Goodall Street back in 1966.

You can probably tell from the funky design of the roof that our building on Green Lane dates back to the swinging sixties, although I can assure you that inside the building is (for the most part) fairly modern.

Sure, we do have a few ball chairs and a vinyl record player blasting out the Rolling Stones but then, who doesn’t?

As good as the Stones were (are?) though, music has moved on a great deal since the sixties and so have building designs.

Just like the members of the Stones themselves, our base on Green Lane is now looking a little ‘weathered’ and as such the search for a suitable replacement is underway.

Subject to complicated negotiations between lots of different parties, progress was always going to follow a similar pace to that at which Charlie Watts now climbs the stairs to his drum kit, however recently details have emerged on how we’re looking to...

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Almost 5,000 retired police officers who have been re-employed by their old force are receiving both a pension and a salary paid by the taxpayer, figures have revealed.

The officers are ‘double dipping’ into the public purse by receiving both a generous monthly pension and a salary from their new job, with one force having more than one in five of all civilian staff jobs carried out by former warranted officers.

Critics said the arrangements showed officers could retire too early, but the Police Federation, which represents rank and file officers, said forces benefited from the set-up because their new staff were already highly experienced.

As police officers can retire after 30 years’ service, it means many are still in their 50s when they retire.

But many decide to remain in work and even return to their old forces, despite generous final-salary pension arrangements.

The officers are part of a growing number of public sector workers who have retired as early as 50 with gold-plated index-linked pensions,...

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Richard Branson and Martin Sorrell among signatories to a letter to ‘The Independent’ that takes aim at Eurosceptics.

Some of Britain’s most successful and eminent business leaders have accused Eurosceptic MPs of putting “politics before economics” and abandoning the national interest in their calls for Britain to leave the European Union.

In a letter to The Independent, the group issues a trenchant riposte to politicians who have argued that Britain’s economic interest would be better served outside the EU. They also call for David Cameron to “strengthen and deepen” the European single market to boost Britain’s economy by £110bn. The letter, which is signed by senior figures including the current and next presidents of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) as well as the chairmen of BT, Deloitte, Lloyds and Centrica, is the first co-ordinated response from the business community to increasing anti-European political...

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