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Lawyer to look again at pay-offs for police
The lawyer leading a radical review of police pay is to reconsider controversial severance packages for chief officers following concerns over a potential £200,000 payment to North Yorkshire’s Chief Constable.
Tom Winsor will look again at payments to chiefs who are forced to leave their posts before 30 years of service after it emerged that Grahame Maxwell, who admitted gross misconduct, was in line for compensation.
North Yorkshire Police Authority must make the payment – which is governed by nationally agreed chief officer regulations – after Mr Maxwell leaves the force unless he takes another job in the police service.
Mr Maxwell will have completed 28-and-a-half years when his fixed-term contract ends in May. Last September, the authority refused his request for it to be renewed.
Under current rules, chiefs who are required to leave their posts before they have clocked up 30 years’ service – the maximum pension entitlement – are due a payment to cover 85 per cent of the difference.
Mr Winsor, a former rail regulator commissioned by the Home Office, has already studied the severance terms and recommended last month that they should be kept as they are.
But the Yorkshire Post understands that Policing Minister Nick Herbert will “draw his attention” to the issues again before he finalises the second part of his two-stage review, expected next month.
Any changes are unlikely to be approved before Mr Maxwell leaves the service, but Mr Herbert’s move has been welcomed by Skipton and Ripon MP Julian Smith, who called for the Chief Constable’s resignation last year.
Mr Smith said: “I am pleased that the Minister has listened to my argument.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “We recognise that there are concerns about this issue. Tom Winsor has said that the system of severance payments would be considered further in the final part of his report into police pay and conditions.”
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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