Policing Board Member and MLA for North Down, Alan Chambers said, “When Chris Patton brought forward his report into the creation of the PSNI, some twenty-five years ago, he recommended that the complement of officers in the new service should number 7500, supported by locally recruited 2500 part-time reserve officers to serve in their own areas. The caveat was that these figures of officers would be policing in an environment largely influenced by the peace that was anticipated would emerge from the Good Friday Agreement.

“Fast forward to today. Policing is still operating in a post-conflict arena. Huge challenges still exist to the safety of officers from dissident republican terror organisations as well as the criminal activities of remnants of loyalist paramilitaries, who are a product of our historic conflict, but whose activities affect the quality of life of the very communities they would claim to represent.

“Police numbers currently sit at around 6200 officers, supported by just 150 part-time reservists. Patton’s figure of 2500 part-time reservists is never mentioned, and we still haven’t managed to get near his recommendation of full-time 7500 officers. 

“The Chairman of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, Liam Kelly, delivered a hard-hitting and fully warranted keynote speech to his members at their annual conference this week. He referenced the impact that the current depleted level of workforce was having on officers. Stress and other health issues are forcing many officers to take sick leave, a situation not helped by the unacceptable number of injuries on duty that sideline those who have been attacked.

“In fact, I recently heard the Chief Constable highlighting that due to a number of factors, he could only call on around 4500 officers on any given day.

“Mr Kelly suggested that politicians are not listening and indeed used the strong words that nobody in Government gives a damn about policing. He later narrowed that narrative to state that the Minister for Justice and her Executive colleagues need to re-establish policing as a meaningful priority. He indicated that at a Bravery Awards event in March, the Minister had said that she felt policing was ‘turning a corner’ but that since then, he had seen no tangible evidence of that. He went on to say that the only corner we see is one that will force us down the road of demoralisation and deterioration of service delivery.

“As the Ulster Unionist Policing spokesperson, who served as a part-time RUC reservist and is currently a member of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, reading between the lines of Mr Kelly’s speech, I detected an increasing loss of confidence amongst his members in the political leadership of the Justice Minister, Naomi Long. Indeed, in conversations with servicing officers, I hear this echoed more and more frequently. The reality is that the buck stops firmly with the Justice Minister, and her words of ongoing talks and discussions offer little encouragement to serving officers that anything is going to change soon. There is plenty of evidence to go to the Westminster Government and make a case for the £200m the Chief Constable needs in each of the next three years. It is a disgrace that the PSNI is having to pick up the tab for settling historic legacy cases along with the failure to deliver what policing was promised in the Good Friday Agreement, an agreement that Westminster is always willing to portray as a huge success story, whilst putting on the blinkers when the topic of policing is mentioned. Extra funding was found for policing in the UK, while the get out for failing policing in Northern Ireland is that it is a devolved matter. The Minister must continually and robustly challenge the Secretary of State to start representing the best interests of the citizens of Northern Ireland in regard to policing. She must start to be his worst nightmare. The men and women of the PSNI deserve no less, and nor do the public they strive to serve.”

“I was pleased to see the Chief Constable, who comes across as a breath of fresh air, talking on the same page as the Federation. His blunt assessments of how his ability to offer the public the policing service they deserve is being seriously hampered by the current shortfall of budget is much more than a wake-up call, but rather should be heard as a clamour of alarm bells ringing. Deaf ears need to be unplugged.”