Police officers of the future should be allowed to choose their own hours and spend more time working from home, the newly-elected president of the Police Superintendents’ Association (PSA) has suggested.

Paul Fotheringham, who took up the post earlier this month, said the Covid pandemic had demonstrated how police forces could afford to be much more flexible with their staff while still protecting the public.

He said allowing officers to fix their own work patterns would help improve diversity in policing and increase the number of women able to reach senior ranks.

Earlier this year Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, hit out at the work from home culture and urged people to return to the office, claiming staff were missing out on vital interaction with colleagues.

But Mr Fotheringham, who spent 28 years with the Kent force, rising to detective chief superintendent, said policing needed to modernise and be open to the idea of flexible working if it wanted to remain attractive as a career option.

He acknowledged that there would always be a need for frontline officers working around the clock to respond to emergencies, but said the changing nature of crime and increased use of technology meant there was much more scope for remote police work.

Just over half of all police are non-emergency response officers, so could be eligible for some form of flexible working arrangements.

Pandemic forced police to embrace new technology

In his first interview since taking over at the PSA, Mr Fotheringham said: “There’s no escaping the fact that we can’t compete in many ways with the private sector when it comes to employee packages and benefits, but we have so much else to offer that’s entirely unique to policing.  

“The only way we will continue to be attractive as a career choice, whilst also bringing in people representing every part of our communities, is to become more flexible and forward thinking when it comes to working patterns. We’re seeing this happen, and it’s really important that we drive this forward.”

He said the pandemic had forced the police to embrace new technology which had opened the door to more remote working and, while his comments might alarm some, insisted the public would not get a reduced service if officers were at home rather than based in police stations.

He explained: “I’ve no doubt that, when we started having to work from home, there would have been some senior leaders that would have been asking the questions – ‘people working from home? We need to check they are working’ – instead of actually trusting the staff.

“But we as an organisation must learn to adapt. Covid has helped with that in a way, because I think it has opened the eyes of many senior leaders within policing and demonstrated that if you offer more flexibility with your workforce you are going to get so much more back.

“Obviously in terms of uniformed officers you are always going to need people available to deal with emergencies – but policing is about many different roles, so the challenge for us in the future is to be much more flexible.”

Opportunity to be much more inclusive

While the current recruitment drive is returning more bobbies to the beat, the changing nature of crime and the explosion in fraud and cyber offences means an increasing number of police officers are now office based.

Mr Fotheringham said response officers would always be on hand to “run out of stations and tackle the bad guys”, but said the PSA had long been an advocate of driving the debate around the importance of “future thinking”.

He said a particular problem in the past had been officers being forced to leave the service because they struggled to fit punishing shift patterns around family life, but offering more flexibility would allow women with young children would be able to stay in service and gain promotions that had previously been out of reach.

He added: “This is opening the eyes of people who would not normally think they could commit to policing because they could not do the 24/7 shift throughout the year.

“It represents an opportunity for the police to be much more inclusive as an organisation – and if we’re inclusive as an organisation then it must have a positive impact in the communities that we serve.

“And we’ve got to be representative, without question. We have to represent all the good in society and the different cultures that we deal with as well.”

Cressida Dick: ‘An honour to serve’

Meanwhile, it has been announced that Dame Cressida Dick’s last day as Metropolitan Police Commissioner will be Sunday, April 10.

Sir Steve House, the deputy commissioner, will serve as acting commissioner while the recruitmentment for her successor is ongoing.

The Met tweeted a picture of Dame Cressida and a quote from her, which said: “It has been a tremendous honour to serve the people of London and the UK. I will share more on the work of my brave officers and staff next week.”