Police overtime – guidance for managers

Report: 11
Date: 6 November 2003
By: Commissioner

Summary

The report is a briefing document to update Members on guidance issued for managing police overtime, work/life balance issues and the impact of the working time directive.

A. Recommendation

That members note the contents of this report.

B. Supporting information

1. MPA Members have requested a report, which provides the Human Resources Committee with the opportunity to discuss the guidance issued to local managers for managing police overtime in the light of the Police Reform changes. This report also includes:

1. How police overtime is being monitored.
2. What action is being taken to ‘review’ officers working long hours, i.e. in excess of 48 hours.
3. Where the ‘hot spots’ are i.e. the units where police officers or civil staff are working in excess of 48 hours per week.
4. The measures that are being taken to improve the work/life balance for all staff, but particularly police staff in the light of the Police Reform changes.

2. Following an Efficiency and Effectiveness Review of Overtime and an Internal Audit report the various recommendations were distilled into a document “Guidelines for Managing Police Overtime Effectively”. This document is provided to assist senior staff in OCUs in managing police overtime. The guidelines are attached at Appendix 1.

3. The MPS monitors overtime at three main levels:

1. The Corporate level
2. Business Group level
3. OCU level

The following table illustrates the monitoring process at each of these levels:

5. Business Support (Finance) regularly produces a list of the 300 highest overtime earners, which highlights officers working long hours. This report is considered by the MPS Senior Management Team and then analysed by the individual business group in their Senior Management Teams. Working Time Directive guidance has been circulated on the “Ask HR” website. Borough Commanders or Heads of Branches are responsible for monitoring/reviewing the hours worked by their staff and identifying those working in excess of 48 hours. The Computer Aided Resource Management system (CARM), allows the individual OCUs to interrogate the data at employee level to extract further information on those officers highlighted as high overtime earners. OCUs can also extract CARM information about any other officers working in excess of 48 hours, who may not be identified among the 300 highest earners.

6. Now that CARM has been rolled out across the MPS the next development is the upgrade to allow all information to be abstracted to a central server. This will allow centralised interrogation of OCU data to identify officers working in excess of 48 hours, but not identified among the highest earners. This will allow the MPS to identify the “Hot Spots” and both local and business group managers to address the issues raised, as appropriate. It will also feed back into future resource allocation.

7. With the rollout of METDuties, data will no longer be retrospectively input into CARM but will be captured by the new electronic booking on and off interface, which effectively means a duty state replacement. This data will be stored in a central data store and not feed back into CARM. The current reporting of working time hours will no longer work in CARM. A new reporting system will be created to evidence hours worked and identifies those officers working in excess of 48 hours. METDuties are responsible and have recently met with the software suppliers and proposed a GQL server solution to provide this information. This is being progressed as a matter of urgency.

8. The following work/life balance policies and guidance have been/are being reviewed by HR and circulated on the HR website:

1. Flexible working guidance for managers
   This guidance is still being prepared with a specific angle on police shift patterns. Completion date December 2003.
2. Re-launch of flexible working policy
   Policy and guidance were published on the intranet July 2003.
3. Carers’ Policy
   Policy and guidance were published on the intranet in July 2003.
4. Guidance on the working time directive
   Policy and guidance were published on the intranet in July 2003.
5. Local OCU People Strategy and Gender Agenda plans
   Plans are now in place subject to central scrutiny.
6. Evaluation of local work life balance promotion
   Yet to be completed.
7. HR Gender Agenda Strategy
   Being progressed, including reviewing the Attendance Management Policy for negative impact on Part-time staff. Completion November 2003.

C. Equality and diversity implications

These issues have been incorporated into the guidance notes and the revised policies.

D. Financial implications

The Police Negotiation Board (PNB) agreement required the MPS to achieve a £2.5m (2003/4), a £3.5m (2004/5) and a £4.5m (2005/6) reduction in overtime expenditure. This report identifies some of the processes that have been established in connection with this requirement. The current overspend for 2003/4 is £9.6m with a forecast year end position of £12.9m

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Commander Rose Fitzpatrick and Supt Clive Wakeley, MPS.

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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