Work/Life balance

The ever increasing demands being placed on a reducing number of officers within the inspecting ranks have long been matters of concern for both us and our colleagues across the country. Indeed ‘Resilience’ it has been the overarching topic of discussion at several recent Inspectors Central Conferences.

We have long suspected that there are too few of us available to do the work demanded. This has resulted in many of our members regularly working excessive hours without the opportunity to take appropriate periods of compensatory rest.

Large numbers of unused annual leave and rest days are being routinely accumulated with no realistic prospect of taking them before their currency expires. All this means that officers are unable to achieve a healthy work/life balance and ultimately this creates a detrimental effect not only upon their own health & wellbeing but also the lives of their immediate family members

In order to highlight these concerns we have surveyed a large number of our members in both 2007 and 2009 seeking information on the hours they are working, the leave they have outstanding and the roles and responsibilities they have. The results on both occasions sadly only confirm our suspicion of passive consent for regular excessive hours, with many examples in breach of the Working Time Regulations

In 2008 the Inspectors Central Committee of the PFEW conducted a nationwide ‘Well being at Work’ stress survey across all inspecting ranks and the data they gathered serves to reinforce the picture of two overstretched, and overworked ranks

Copies of both these survey findings were widely circulated and copies provided to the MPS and MPA.

In December 2008 we published a guide to working conditions for the Inspecting ranks in the MPS entitled ‘Exploding the Myths’ which we have distributed to all our members in the hope that it will educate them as to what is expected of them under the 1994 salarying agreement and to assist them in asserting their rights under the Working Time regulations with their managers.

We believe that our members need to understand the importance of a healthy work-life balance and that provision exist within both the WTR and the agreed working conditions for inspectors which allow them to better achieve this should they so wish. Concepts such as flexibility, balancing of hours and night worker health screening need to be understood and used by officers to protect themselves from unacceptable exploitation.

In 2010 we intend to publish an update booklet in the ‘Myths’ series dealing with the findings of our latest survey of members.