ATTRITION RATES STEMMING THE TIDE
Professor Sarah Charman and Dr Jemma Tyson from the University of Portsmouth address the rise of voluntary resignations in policing in England and Wales
As reported by the Home Office at the end of July 2023, the number of police officers voluntarily resigning from the police service in England and Wales has now overtaken the number retiring for the first time. While accepting that there are cultural
and generational changes to our working lives and careers, these figures should not be brushed away as simply representing higher officer numbers or as the Home Office put it “in line with expected modelling”. The ‘leavers rate’ (dividing the numbers of voluntary resignations by the number of FTE officers the previous year) takes account of officer numbers and shows that this rate increased from 1.5 per cent in 2021, to 2.5 per cent in 2022 and is now 3.3 per cent in 2023. This is a worrying trend. These numbers beg two questions in relation to whether this is a particular problem for the police service or not. Do the increasing numbers of voluntary resigners reflect a movement away from policing as a ‘job for life’ with officers deliberately targeting policing as a short-term career plan before embarking on a new challenge? Or should we consider the increasing numbers of voluntary resignations as an indication of some level of organisational and/or occupational failure? Either way, the lack of research in the area of police leavers makes this understanding a challenge. It’s important therefore to try to understand why police officers resign prematurely from the police service and whether this is ‘avoidable turnover’. Retention is now one of the biggest challenges within policing but this cannot be tackled if we don’t understand why officers are leaving.
Over the course of the last five years 34 | POLICE | OCTOBER | 2023
at the University of Portsmouth, we have been researching the issue of police leavers with first a study within one police force and more recently
Police Federation, Steve Hartshorn, is not wrong to say that it is important that “voices are listened to” and it’s clear from our research that this is currently not happening. One
“The lack of research in the area of police leavers makes this understanding a challenge. It’s important therefore to try to understand why police officers resign prematurely from the police service and whether this is ‘avoidable turnover’”
a national study which has aimed to listen to the voices of police leavers and to understand the often complex reasons for their resignations. This has involved almost 100 lengthy and often emotional interviews. The Chair of the
straightforward reason why we don’t know more about why officers are leaving is that no-one has historically really asked the question. This may be in
equal parts organisational (cuts to policing budgets have reduced supervisory capacity and staff human resources) and cultural (“if you don’t like it, they’re recruiting at [any supermarket name]”) but it does mean that the small amount of exit interviews that
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