COPPED ENOUGH NOT A RESOURCE REST IS A RIGHT
Triggered by the National Police Chief’s Council’s proposals to weaken cancelled rest day protections, the Federation’s new campaign demands forces stop taking officers’ recovery time for granted as fatigue, morale collapse and resignations continue to surge
The message from the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) could not be clearer: Hands Off Our Rest Days. The new micro-campaign, launched as part of the Federation’s wider national campaign, Copped Enough, is a direct and uncompromising response to proposals put forward by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) in their submission to the Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB). Those proposals seek to make it cheaper and easier for forces to cancel officers’ rest days and at the very moment the service is buckling under
record attrition, collapsing morale and an exhausted frontline. In a move that has stunned many
rank and file officers, the NPCC used its 2026/27 pay submission to urge the PRRB to cut compensation for cancelled
06 | POLICE | APRIL | 2026
rest days from time-and-a-half (with a four-hour minimum) to time-and-a-third, calculated in 15-minute increments, while also supporting tighter controls over when cancelled rest days must be re-rostered. Put simply, chiefs have asked for more power to take officers’ time—and to pay them less for it.
the few remaining safeguards in officers’ conditions felt, to many, like betrayal.
“The proposals, if adopted, would mean officers ordered in on what should be time off would be paid less than the protections currently provide.”
For the PFEW, this was the final straw.
Years of declining pay, rising demand, relentless public order commitments and mass cancellations of rest days have pushed officers to breaking point. To then watch senior leaders propose weakening one of
A PROPOSAL THAT MISSES THE REALITY OF MODERN POLICING Officers’ rest days are not a perk. They are not optional. They are the only protected space many officers have left to rebuild their resilience, see their families, recover physically and mentally, and simply rest. Yet the NPCC’s proposal
treats those rest days as a budgetary pressure rather than a welfare necessity. The submission argued for affordability while completely
ignoring that affordability for forces means unaffordability for officers, who have already suffered over 20 per cent real- terms pay erosion over the past decade. The proposals, if adopted, would mean officers ordered in on what should be time
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