THE chief constable of Surrey Police has admitted?a cost-cutting decision to force senior officers with more than 30 years' service to retire had left some of them "angry and upset", but that it was the "only tool available" to deal with a shrinking budget.
The move was approved last week by Surrey Police Authority, along with another plan to put on the market?several police stations that have?been deemed surplus to requirements.
The force is now the first in England to invoke 23-year-old legislation compelling senior officers to retire, with the cull due to begin early next year.
This week, Mr Rowley said forced retirement?was "not the best way of doing things but the only tool we’ve got".
Preparations to restructure the force were first considered by senior officers and the police authority late last year.
Mr Rowley said: “We came to the view six months ahead of the [general] election that there were going to be big cuts in the public sector, and rather than waiting for them to happen, [we should] get ahead of the game.
"We are determined that delivery of policing in Surrey won’t suffer. We are probably going to have to save 15 to 20% of our?budget. That’s going to be difficult.
"One of the things we have done is change the way we organise the force so that I can try and run the force with fewer senior leaders. In terms of inspectors and through to chief superintendents, it is trying to run it with 40 fewer of them.
“If we wanted to make the savings that we wanted from cutting back senior leaders, we had to find a way to force it.
“There is this odd provision in police regulations that goes back a long time... to force people to retire who have got more than their 30 years’ service and take a full pension.
“It was always there. We didn’t think we would need to use it. Over the last few months it's become increasingly clear if we want to save the savings we want to so that we can protect the frontline PCs and sergeants who are out there doing their day-to-day job, then that was the only thing that we could do.
“We took specialist legal advice and last week took the decision to the police authority, saying this is not the best way of doing things but it is the only tool available to us.?
"The reality is it's probably 30 people over the next three years who will get forced out. Probably half of those would have retired anyway and this is just making it a certainty.
"Of the others, some are relaxed about it, some are angry and upset as you would expect.”
When the cost-cutting proposals were first announced, Mr Rowley said that the money saved would pay for an extra 200 officers patrolling the county’s streets.
The number recruited this year was a few short of 100, and?given the scale of government cuts the chief constable said he?could now not guarantee that the initial target would still be met.
“How the Home Office shares out their cuts to the 43 police forces isn’t clear yet and they should be announcing that in December.
“I certainly don’t see us going backwards from the extra officers we have recruited this year and I still hope we are going to meet that target. We are not going to be certain for a little while yet though.”
As for the proposed sale of police stations including Byfleet, Ash, Ripley, Sunbury, Lightwater, Frimley and Lingfield - with neighbourhood teams set to move into council offices or other community buildings instead - Mr Rowley said: "What this is not about is withdrawal from communities.
"Over the past three years or so we have been looking at if we can do better if we have local police officers working more closely, for example, with the local council.
"In Woking and Runnymede and other areas, the local police officers who patrol the local beats have been working out of the council offices there for two or three years.
“What we see through that is that they do a much better job because they are joined up with wardens and council officials who do housing. Having a joined up approach means they are tackling those problems in the area much more effectively.
“People do value local police stations, but far more they value the officer on the beat, the PCSO on the beat and that visible activity.
"We are not withdrawing, we are going to share buildings in neighbourhoods, we are going to be more visible, and we are trying to make sure we are in the right places because some of these old buildings aren’t even in the right places anymore.”
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