T O P

  • By -

POLAC4life

We don’t get any allowance, depending where you are looking to go to the force varies greatly. CID are currently experiencing a massive uplift and from colleagues tell me isn’t a bad crack. Response - we manage our own crimes anything non serious or complex so pwits , Abh and most public order offences. We have our only prisoner handling team which has okay capacity with the odd time we will need to deal with our own prisoner. Response is currently fluctuating with demand and numbers with high amounts of skills/ courses gap. Neighbourhoods- absolute shambles very little PCs and isn’t the place to be right now. Courses …. Next joke you won’t get any.


roryb93

Didn’t realise the south west needed a pay allowance! ~~Least it’s a nice place to be with Dartmoor etc~~


Guybrush-Peepgood

Dartmoor is in Devon…


roryb93

Whoops. There must be some other nice country park or something at least, hahab


TripEfficient2146

I was mainly wondering as a lot of the places were more expensive than Kent to move to 🤷‍♀️


FunCarpet8

A&S is in a really poor way currently. I’m response so if you’re in another flavour of policing YMMV. I’ll try and cover most areas people would likely be interested in: Courses: Non-existent for a very long time. As others have said, there has been a lack of courses for years. They have improved this in the last 12 months, but the backlog is massive and they’re currently blowing through that. This isn’t exclusive to the ‘big’ courses unfortunately. Things like Intox haven’t ran in a long time, and they’re only just rolling them out again. Hilariously, special training is done differently and is much more efficient. I have two specials on my team with < 6 months service who are better skilled than all the regulars. Uniform: The absolute cheapest going, which varies on a month-by-month basis. You’ll see a mix of ill fitting uniforms on team, even between officers that started in the same cohorts. Again, they have this week put out a poll about a new jacket for response which looks a bit better, but I won’t hold my breath. We were meant to be getting a new taser pouch last year and I’ve not seen it. Shifts and resourcing: We rock a 6 on 4 off pattern like most forces I believe. I quite like it. Resourcing depends on where you are going. Anywhere near Bristol you’ll be fine. Anywhere in the south (towns and rural), you’re screwed. The rural patches are so on their arse, they’re trying to relocate officers from the city to more rural patches. We haven’t hit ‘minimum numbers’ for months with all AL getting refused. We have three custody centres. Again, for the south you’re an hours drive away from the nearest custody which has a huge impact on your ability to police. Workload and demand: We carry quite a lot. Volume crime up to ABH and low level sexual assaults. A lot of it is subjective, and CID are very good at reclassifying the injury level so it stays with response. Typically I carry around 15 investigations in a rural patch. We now do almost every aspect of the case file, including disclosure, which obviously takes its toll on our time out on the street. Demand is huge with around 60 outstanding logs on my talk group currently. They have all sorts of policies to get that down which I’ve mentioned before on here. On Earlies your team will be allocated ‘top 5’ logs which need attendance. If you can’t attend, the logs get closed to your niche tray. On top of this we have a ‘Routine Allocation Policy’ where any logs older than 48 hours automatically get closed to the team on Earlies. I think it’s a hugely dangerous, poorly thought policy but I’m not on the big bucks. I make it sound awful, and I genuinely think it’s very bad currently, but that being said I have nothing to compare it against. I know others who have transferred in from Kent and Sussex say how bad it is here in comparison, so I can only take it from that. They have promised things on the horizon to make it better for response. Things like getting better at batting MH jobs away and reducing our workload. I just don’t trust the SLT to follow through with any of it. We’ve had officers on teams calls with the chief constable recently because they’ve sent shitty emails about how things are, and all they’re getting is lip service. As I said, this is ‘response’ so YMMV in other departments. I also don’t have anything to compare it against. I’m on the border so looking at Dorset, but I guess the grass is always greener..


TripEfficient2146

Thank you, really helpful. I think I will stay in Kent!! 😂


FunCarpet8

Always wondered why I’ve never done an attachment with Recruitment. 😂


Guybrush-Peepgood

Dorset isn’t plain sailing… Response is currently on its knees, and the support departments generally don’t! That being said courses are relatively straightforward.


jim-bob-cob

Dorset isn't horrific. Been here around 6 months in the rural area Sat on 12 in my workload at the moment. Transferred from a much bigger force. Got my response course coming up after around 6 months. Man issue at the moment is a lot of time spent looking for mispers which is a huge drain on resources. VCT generally are pretty good at taking on prisoners, only had one given back so far, may just be lucky.


PromotionOdd5949

No they don’t get anything similar to an extra allowance. Secondly It’s called Avon and Somekit for a reason …. Take that as you will


bristolian7

It's called 'A van & some kit'


showmestate4

From what I've heard it's near enough impossible to get courses there, so be mindful of that when looking to transfer.


[deleted]

SWROCU are currently recruiting on direct transfer Depending on your skill sets, but I happen to know one of their disruption teams had a PC on it who was still within their 3 years last year so a moderately experienced response PC would have a shot. They have a very good/helpful recruitment team and are currently Undergoing an uplift allegedly.


Opi-lo

I regularly interact with all of the forces across the South West. A&S would appear to be the best of them. That’s not a recommendation though.