Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary – the Nitty Gritty

Last updated on June 6th, 2023 at 07:23 pm

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Good afternoon folks, or whatever time of day it is when you’ve got your feet up with a cup of tea reading this.

You may not want to know about the nitty gritty of HMIC, in which case I apologise for taking up your time.  Some of you might believe that the devil is in the detail and want to know how HMIC works, and, possibly more importantly, how much it costs our country each year to staff this beast.

Anyway, I asked those awfully nice people at HMIC a couple of questions recently and I’ve finally been blessed with a response.

The first (cheeky I admit) question I asked them was this

a) What will be the benefits and entitlements of the new Chief Inspector HMIC’s  pension scheme?

b) How much will his contributions to that scheme be as a percentage of his salary?

The reply I got was this

You may find the following link to the recent Home Affairs Committee report on the Appointment of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary useful. Page 18 sets out the pension arrangements applicable to the post:  http://www.publications.parliament.uk/HASC – Appointment of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary.  Very useful I’m sure, but I eventually found it here http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmhaff/183/18302.htm

I’ll try and save you a bit of time and give you the gist of it here;

Pension — The appointment will be pensionable from the outset.

  • Serving police officers will be able to continue contributing to the Police Pension Scheme (PPS) for the duration of this appointment as the post falls within the scope of the scheme (Police Pensions Act 1976). This abates the pension of retiring/retired police officers.
  • Those who are not serving police officers will be able to join the Civil Service pension scheme. This offers a choice of a career average or stakeholder pension, giving you the flexibility to choose the pension that suits you best. The alternatives are:

—  Nuvos — A high quality, index—linked defined benefit pension scheme, payable at 65, that currently has a 3.5% member contribution rate. We also make contributions and meet the bulk cost of the scheme.

—  Partnership Pension Account — This pension account provides a way of saving for retirement. The department will make contributions to a stakeholder pension, which is a form of personal pension. The departmental contribution will vary according to your age at the beginning of the tax year. You may decide how much you want to contribute, but you do not have to contribute anything. If you do contribute, the department will match your contributions up to a maximum of 3% of pensionable earnings.

I note that as a non-police officer his pension contributions will be considerably less than those of a serving officer.  I don’t know if that is anything the Federation has considered and might be able to address.

My other question, for any other number-crunchers amongst us, was this;

Could you please tell me what the current staffing levels at HMIC indicating the Job Titles and total number of staff in each job e.g. Analysts, Finance Officers etc etc. This request is designed to include all ranks/grades from Chief Inspector down to Admin Assistant.

What is the total salary bill per annum?

Well those awfully nice people sent me handful of spreadsheets which I’ve been able to unravel and this is basically what I found;

There is the equivalent of 132.7 post-holders in the Junior Staff category.  I won’t bore you with their breakdown but if you really want to know you only have to ask.  I was provided with the payscale for each grade but not each post-holder’s actual salary.  On the figures provided the annual salary bill for the junior staff (their description, not mine) is between £5,641,769 and £6,576,265 p.a.

The senior staff is a little more straightforward.

There are a totally of 17 senior posts although not all of them seem to be currently filled, or ‘culled’.

Again, individual salaries were not disclosed by post-holders are clearly identified together with their pay-bands.

The total salary for the 7 posts currently filled is between £1,125,000 and £1,159,993.

Having got my trusty abacus out, I make it that the total annual salary bill for HMIC is between £6,766,769 and £7,736,258

My regular readers will recall that this figure is more or less the annual equivalent of the Queen’s Half Hour.  Is this fair? You decide.

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