Metropolitan Police statement:
The MPS’s took the decision in November to give a 1% pay rise to all police staff. This is at the ceiling of the Government’s public sector pay policy and the pay increase was given without any strings attached to it. The PCS demands include a pay increase of up to 6%. The MPS is simply unable to meet this demand.
The PCS Union which represents a number of our police staff has been balloting its members in the past weeks on potential strike action over the pay dispute. There are just over 14,000 members of police staff in the MPS. Only around 20% of PCS members took part in the vote and 1,150 people voted for strike action. That accounts for just 1 in 12 police staff members in the MPS actively voting for strike action.
The PCS has now informed the MPS that they intend to take strike action on New Year’s Eve - one of the days when demand for our services is highest. We have tried and tested business continuity plans for all eventualities, including industrial action. These ensure that critical functions performed by police staff are performed by police officers who are fully trained in those roles.
To ensure we are able to implement these plans, we stopped granting any further requests for annual leave or days off for officers and staff in a number of key areas for New Year's Eve in mid-December. In some cases we've also had to take the very difficult decision to cancel planned days off for officers with certain critical skills or in critical operational areas.
These are clearly all steps we'd rather not take, but we have to be prepared to maintain critical operational areas in the event of a strike action by police staff, and we are confident that we have appropriate plans in place."
