Norfolk's Police Fed welcomes Govt. testing plan, but warns it won't solve staff shortages
Officers have been changing shifts at short notice and working longer hours to cover gaps
Last updated 6th Jan 2022
Norfolk's Police Federation has welcome the Government's testing plan, but warn it won't solve the staff shortages they're facing.
It's after it was announced that certain groups of critical workers would get access to priority Covid testing.
Officers have been changing shifts at short notice and working longer hours to cover staffing gaps left by Covid.
That's according to Andy Symonds, the chairman of Norfolk's Police Federation: "Yes it's a good thing. We've got extra lateral flow tests and I know that as a Constabulary we've got a stock of those to identify who's got the virus. But the consequence of identifying them is that we then have officers off work, which means more gaps".
He says covering the end of the year was particularly tricky for the service: "On New Years Eve, we had about 18 officers across the county who could no longer work that night, which we know is generally a busy time for all of us. So we then had to make a number of calls into officers to change their shifts at short notice, to come in and cover those gaps. Which has it's impacts, as everyone has their plans for New Years Eve".
He warns a continued rise in cases would be very troubling: "We've only got a finite amount of Police officers that we can deploy and if we see a rising number of cases, we end up going into a critical state where we would have to look at making officers work longer and harder to cover those gaps, which is not ideal. So hopefully we don't get to that position, because I do worry about the effect that moving to that could have on our officers well-being".
He concluded by saying he's concerned about how longer shifts and shorter breakers will affect officers: "We are giving a good service and will continue covering those gaps so that it doesn't diminish.
"But all this will probably have a negative impact on the number of officers that I represent. In so far as they are having to change shift at very short notice, cover gaps and work harder and longer when they are at work. Which takes it's toll on people after a while"