Revealed: The £243m wage bill for sick police officers

The wage bill for the officers - who are on "restrictive or recuperative duties" - is £243 million a year.

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• Restricted duties 'better than ill health retirement'

This is the first time the full extent of the problem has been known. The figures emerged after Freedom of Information requests to police forces across the country carried out on behalf of the Daily Mail.

Scroll down see the best and worst forces for sick leave

Sunday night the revelation brought demands for a shake-up of the rules.

Officers are placed on so-called restricted duties when they return from long-term sick leave. They are supposed to gradually increase their hours until they return to full service.

In many cases, they do not take part in frontline duties such as patrolling the streets. Instead, they are stuck behind desks completing paperwork or answering phone calls.

But, despite playing only a limited role in protecting the public, they receive their full salary - an average of £30,000 a year.

The biggest bill is faced by the Metropolitan Police, which has 1,744 officers on restricted duties - 5.7 per cent of the total force strength.

Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said it was an issue that must be tackled. He warned that, in some cases, police are receiving a full salary for as little as one hour's work each day.

The total number of officers on restricted duty in England and Wales is 8,101. The £243 million bill is in addition to the hundreds of millions of pounds in sick pay received by police officers each year.

Each of the 140,000 police in England and Wales takes an average of 8.5 days off each year. Each officer is entitled to six months at full pay for sick leave in any one year, followed by half-pay for the remaining six months.

No figures are available for the average amount of time each officer spends on restricted duties, but many are understood to have been away from full-time work on the frontline for more than a year.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance pressure group, said: "Some officers will obviously have to be on restrictive pay but when the numbers get out of hand, taxpayers are getting poor value for money and public security is put at risk. This problem needs to be sorted immediately."

Tory home affairs spokesman Nick Herbert said: "Police officers who often put themselves in risk of danger must be treated fairly, but equally chief constables must manage their budgets and ensure the number of officers on restrictive duties must not get out of hand.

"It also creates a problem if you have an officer on restrictive duties doing the same job as a member of civilian staff but there is a big pay differential between the two."

Merseyside had the highest proportion of officers on restrictive duties last year, at 11 per cent, followed by Staffordshire (8.9 per cent) and West Yorkshire (7.8 per cent). In contrast, Devon and Cornwall, recorded less than 2 per cent of officers on non-frontline duties.

Police blame a crackdown on early retirement by former Home Secretary David Blunkett for the huge number of officers receiving pay for restrictive duties.

He claimed cynical abuse of the early retirement programme was undermining the effectiveness of the entire service. At the time, a third of all officers retired early on health grounds.

Police Federation chairman Jan Berry said: "We do not support anyone who abuses the system. But we will fight to ensure police officers injured protecting the public are not further abused by the system.

"Many officers are in Catch 22, where they wish to return to fulltime duties but are prevented from doing so due to long-term illness. The logic would be to retire them on ill health pensions but there is an underlying policy not to do so."

She said some of those on restricted duties have been badly injured in the line of duty.

Restrictive and recuperative duty is the blanket term for officers in two situations. Those on restricted duties complete a full working day, but away from the front line.

Those on recuperative duties work as little as one hour each day as they gradually build up their hours. The vast majority of those on recuperative duties are legitimately recovering and are likely to eventually return to work.

However, there are fears the system may be open to abuse or malingering by a minority.

The Home Office said: "For police officers who cannot to work, ill health retirement is the right route - but it is better for the public that officers work on restricted duties than that their skills and experience being lost completely."

The Met said it had the largest number of officers on restrictive and recuperative duty because it was the biggest force. It added: "We do adhere to what is within Home Office guidelines. On restrictive duties, officers are working full hours."

Merseyside Police said: "Although officers on restrictive or recuperative duties are not able to perform full operational duties, over 95 per cent of officers in Merseyside are fulfilling a role which must be done by a police officer. Therefore their skills are utilised in a policing role."