£97.4m cost of forcing Midland police officers to retire
A controversial scheme which forced senior police officers to retire cost £97.4 million in pension payouts, it was revealed today.
The West Midlands and Staffordshire forces used the A19 regulation to make officers with more than 30 years of service retire, even if they did not want to.
It was introduced to save money on salaries as serving officers cannot be made redundant.
Critics of the scheme had highlighted the centuries' worth of combined experience both forces stood to lose and today the cost of the scheme to the public purse can be revealed.
Pension lump sum payouts for the 591 officers to leave the West Midlands force since December 2010 cost £71.3m. That is on top of £12.4m being paid out annually in pensions to those officers. The force also shelled out a further £78,511 on legal counsel for contested cases.
In Staffordshire, the combined lump sums for 78 officers was £12m, while a further £1.7m will be paid out to those officers every year towards their pensions. Staffordshire began using the regulation on November 30 2011 and it was ended on January 1. Figures were revealed under the Freedom of Information Act.
Neither force had to meet the cost of the pensions themselves, so chiefs were able to balance their own books through the use of the A19 regulation, but it did mean passing on costs prematurely to a national pot.
The Home Office, meanwhile, confirmed that it had not been keeping track of the costs it had faced as a direct result of the early forced retirement of officers. Steve Whitefield, of the Home Office, said: "Chief officers are in the best position to take decisions on how they manage the resources available to them to meet their operational need."
The West Midlands force, the second biggest in the country behind the Met, saved a combined £37m off its wage bill by losing the senior officers while Staffordshire saved £4.8m.
Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East, said: "Many of these experienced officers were forced into retirement early when they wanted to continue their service. These figures show we've ended up with a poorer service and a big bill for the taxpayer for it.
"The decision to cut central funding was a catastrophe for policing; perhaps the worst decision by the coalition in its three years."
Dan Barton, head of West Midlands Police's corporate communications department, said: "The implementation of A19 was an essential tool to enable the force to meet the demands of efficiency and that has been achieved."
Staffordshire's police and crime commissioner Matthew Ellis made it one of his first decisions on assuming his role to ditch the A19 policy.
