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Overtime Bill: Met officers boost their pay by £50,000
Martin Bentham, Home Affairs Editor28 Sep 2009
Two Met officers earned more than £50,000 in overtime last year and dozens of others doubled their pay with after-hours working, official figures show today.
A total of 4,171 constables and sergeants — more than one in eight of those employed by the Met — received overtime payments of at least £10,000 over 12 months to April.
Annual spending on overtime is estimated at £133 million — £12 million over budget — with two sergeants receiving more than £50,000. The overtime cash took one sergeant's earnings to more than £100,000 and the second officer's to just under six figures.
Another nine officers, four constables and five sergeants, used overtime to boost their pay by between £40,000 and £50,000 each.
Today's disclosure follows the Standard's report last month that a Met constable earned more than £100,000 last financial year, largely from overtime.
The Met insists it monitors closely amounts claimed for overtime and says there is often a “genuine need” for staff to do extra work. But some observers warn the system can be abused, such as by officers deliberately making arrests close to the end of their shifts. The Met paid overtime of between £10,000 and £20,000 to 2,734 constables and 988 sergeants in the 2008/09 financial year out of 30,500 officers eligible for the payments.
The Met paid 161 sergeants overtime of £20,000 and £30,000 to add to their salaries, which go from £35,610 to £40,020, as 33 received from £30,000 to £40,000 and five from £40,000 to £50,000.
Jenny Jones, a Green member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, said: “I think these figures are utterly dreadful. I can't believe officers doing this amount of extra time can be performing as well as they should.” The Met's overtime budget for the 2009/10 financial year is £121.3 million, but a report to the MPA in July warned it could be more than £133 million. It said in a statement: “Overtime is only called upon when it is essential. Recent examples include the Tamil demonstrations in Parliament Square.”
Reader views (15)
extopcop, I doubt that you were ever a cop, let alone a top one.
This comment alone says it all "4000 officers on duty on Bank Holiday Monday at time-and-a-half plus another day off for Notting Hill Carnival!" ... as a serving police officer I could think of a million places i would rather be than at the Notting Hell carnival where we are subjected to three days of abuse from mostly ungrateful members of the public. You could offer to pay me 4 times as much and i would take those days off given the choice. But we are not given the choice.
As for people earning 50k in overtime? I've not met one, yes i have my fair share of overtime...often coming towards then end of the shift when an arrest is needed, yaaay - i get a few hours of overtime...but as a result i then struggle to get home having missed one of the last trains home. wooohoo!
Why don't all these armchair experts volunteer as a special for a few hours a month. Then, and only then, will you be able to give a non-biased opinion.
That said i would not do any other job and it is nice when we do get thanks and support from the public. It is appreciated.
- Sense, LONDON, 29/09/2009 00:55
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Police overtime is just over £11 an hour net. Do the maths, the few that earn the big overtime need to completely live for their jobs working most days of the year. Most of those guys work in Diplomatic Protection, Counter Terrorism and on Murder Squads. Most local London police officers work 12 hour shifts and have no desire to do unnecessary overtime. Senior officers are paid peanuts compared with senior managers in industry but isn't it interesting how since the private sector stopped throwing around massive 5 and 6 figure bonuses how the spotlight has been turned onto the public servants. Hands up who really beleived that Police Officers do what they do for the money.
- Baggy, Kennington, 28/09/2009 22:52
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extopcop isnt an ex copper or hed know bank holiday is double time
- Jamie, bath uk, 28/09/2009 21:36
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I just wish that all the people who left negative comments below spent an hour talking to a real policeman before making judgements.
They risk their lives, lose sleep and a chance to spend time with their families to keep London safe. Areas like Southwark where 13 year old children stab each other have no choice but to give policemen and detectives overtime because you are only allowed to hold prisoners for a limited amount of time before you have to let them go or charge them. Not everyone chooses to work 20 hour days.
- Alexandra, London, UK, 28/09/2009 20:48
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Never mind the overtime bill, why are we paying the Police Force in general so much money?
When as Superintendent Steve Harrod said recently that they are powerless to act on even so-called low level anti social behavior under the law change in 1998 which as he said is now the responsibility of local councils.
Are Local councils going to have power of arrest and a 24/7 help line?
Signed Carl Barron Chairman of agpcuk
- Carl Barron, Christchurch, Dorset, 28/09/2009 14:31
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They are worth every penny and should not have to work overtime to earn a decent wage.
- Brian, Wiltshire, 28/09/2009 14:07
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Like most other civil servants the "overworked" policeman is pretty much a myth perpetuated by our love of cliched copshows.The reality is that policework is all about taking the easy option; stopping non-threatening people doing what they want to do but not protecting them.
- John Entwistle, Hertford, England, 28/09/2009 11:47
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Extopcop makes some excellent points about poor supervision and weak leadership - that said, his use of the phrase 'spanish pratcices' is wide of the mark in relation to front line uniformed officers. Without the overtime system weak leadership and poor supervision would see widespread abuse of frontline officers as the 'more for less' philosophy took hold with a true vice like grip. The results would soon make things worse, higher absenteeism, sick rates and in time an even higher overtime bill. However there are 'spanish practices' in the CID and Specialist Operations teams and within many HQ branches or Directorates where overtime is viewed as 'guaranteed' and is claimed for illegally. After the credit card scandal I would have hoped that The Met's new commissioner who is apparantly more concerned with his 'Six P's' than anything else (where is he?) would have ensure strict and harsh audits of each branch going back 5 years. Money could be saved - tons of it!
- Ranter, Maidstone, UK, 28/09/2009 10:56
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'officers deliberately making arrests close to the end of their shifts', what would people like the police to do not arrest these people and let them go.
What the report doesn;t say is what departments these police officers are working in and as always the report by the standard doesnt go into the full facts it just lets people become anti-police
- Steven Jones, london, 28/09/2009 10:56
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So what? These officers earned the money by working the hours. These kinds of reports are meaningless and are basically attempts to stir up misinformed comments. The police don't waste the overtime budget - plenty of officers on very mediocre salaries work many an hour of overtime unpaid, so for these to earn so much must indicate that they are working a significant ammount for the money.
- S Stander, London, 28/09/2009 10:20
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This is nothing to do with 'Mountains of Paperwork' (much overblown!), nor is it to do with there being not enough police on the streets and the need to pay overtime to find them, (that is more to do with failure to deploy existing resources properly than anything else). No, this is all about Spanish Practices and abuse of an outdated system by people who believe that the purpose of the overtime budget is as a separate fund available to pay for foreign holidays and to help with the mortgage. There are daily abuses where officers manipulate 'cancellation without notice' in order to receive 'minimum compensation' at 'enhanced rates'. 4000 officers on duty on Bank Holiday Monday at time-and-a-half plus another day off for Notting Hill Carnival!, when most observers agree that a quarter of that number would have been more than sufficient. This shows that the scandal is also about weak leadership and an attitude that shows contempt for how public money is spent. I hope these officers are saving their overtime money, because after the general election no matter who wins, the chickens will come home to roost and the public purse will snap shut.
Thirty-five years in two forces tells me that when that happens, apart from the squealing of the Federated ranks, most members of the public won't notice any difference.
- Extopcop, London, 28/09/2009 10:14
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This sort of report is meaningless without the rationale behind why the overtime was taken. Most police forces run out of overtime budget by spring, yet if this is justified by staff being deployed on projects such as the Ipswich murders, where the local force couldn't cope, or being called in on days off for additional duties such as searches, football matches, etc. which largely depend on officers allocated to those functions doing them on their off. Is the article questioning whether the amounts were deserved (it looks a bit like bonus-gate the way it was written) or is it an opportunity to look at how we staff and manage our officers' time to best suit the demands?
- From The East, Essex, 28/09/2009 09:49
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Contrast with the troops in Afghanistan who get no overtime and are not even subject to the minimum wage. Disgraceful. No serving frontline soldier should earn less than a police officer.
- Ab, London, 28/09/2009 08:40
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That's what you get when you swamp people with bogus paperwork and still expect them to do the job they were doing before.
I'm not shocked, reality is, it shows how poorly police officers are paid for overtime.
- Threaded, Roskilde, Denmark, 28/09/2009 08:33
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Shame we do not see any policemen on the streets.
- Georgie, Islington, London, 28/09/2009 08:07
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