Police blow £17 million on 300 diversity staff

Good news for British bobbies: you are about to get a real-terms pay rise. Yes, that is right: Yvette Cooper has reportedly wrung the change out of Rachel Reeves, amid some eleventh-hour pay negotiations ahead of Wednesday’s spending review. But while few would begrudge those working hard some extra cash, Mr S is not alone in wondering whether the boys in blue really are spending all their sums effectively.

For some coppers, it seems, are less interested in being police constables and more rather concerned with political correctness. A spate of stories have appeared in the papers recently, in which overzealous officers pitch up at mild-mannered citizens’ homes. Examples include Telegraph writer Allison Pearson, visited by Essex Police on Remembrance Day, and journalist Maxie Allen who was arrested over ‘malicious communications’ in a school WhatsApp chat.

So Mr S has done some digging into the cost of how much equality and diversity posts are costing police forces across the UK. It transpires that some 323 such staff are employed by 35 different forces, at a cost of £17.8 million a year. Those with the most EDI staff are the Met on 64 equality officers and Police Scotland with 54 such staff. The costs of such a legion? A cool £5.2 million and £2.6 million respectively. Kerching!

Other forces with an impressive wage bill include the tiny City of London Police, which manages to spend the third-highest amount in the UK: £767,000 on only eight staff. West Yorkshire pays its nine-man team some £550,000 while the dozen equality officers in South Wales take home £528,000 collectively. Essex doles out £614,000 among its nine staff, while Durham and North Yorkshire both spend more than half a million each year too.

Impressively, some high-spending forces also shell out further sums for training. Police Scotland spent £342,000 on external courses for its many staff, with Surrey taking top spot on £366,000. The City of London doled out another £89,000 for such courses between four companies. Given all this expertise, you would hope mistakes stop happening in future eh?