police world Edition 3 2013

An Update from the NEC

Working on your behalf National President, Tom Crozier, updates members on news from the National Council Meeting.

T he Section UK National Council You will have already received notification of some of the outcomes of the Section’s principal business meeting through items previously published on the website and the monthly updates circulated by our staff at Nottingham. The most significant outcome of the NCM was the decisive vote in favour of extending membership of IPA to include Police Staff. This and the other proposals are described in more detail in the separate update included on pages 6 and 7. Suffice to say that this issue has been on our agenda for the best part of 20 years without achieving a resolution. I am delighted that Council has now given its overwhelming support, and that now brings the matter to a conclusion. In this article I want to summarise the progress made since I last reported on the main threads of our strategy. In brief what our agreed headline strategy aims to achieve is financial viability and growth in membership. Everything that we do on the National Executive should be guided by these clear objectives. Finance I have to start with an apology. At the NCM 2012 in Cardiff, Fred Boyd the National Treasurer reported that we had operated at a significant deficit of over £9,000 in 2011. The NEC gave an undertaking that we would achieve a balanced budget for 2012. That was not realised, and the end of year accounts again show a deficit, albeit much reduced, of £1,200. I would like to add some context to the budget outcome this year and indeed recent years. You only need to go back 5 or 6 years to when our reserve was attracting 10% interest, adding about £30,000 annually to the coffers. Currently we are attracting only £4,000 per annum interest. Furthermore, for the first time we agreed to pay a guaranteed fixed levy of 12.5% to Regions from 2012. In March 2012 over £30,000 was given back to Regions. Compare that to recent years where Regions have received very much less and on occasion nothing at all! The simple arithmetic suggests that to achieve a balanced budget we have to Meeting (NCM) was held a few short weeks ago at the Palace Hotel, Torquay.

scale back on our spending to the tune of £45 - £55,000 compared to six years ago. As you would expect we have had to review how we spend your money in our efforts to reconcile expenditure against our projected income. A great deal of effort has been expended in identifying and achieving many small savings and also others that are relatively significant. Examples are: £6,000 reduction in Police World costs through reduced paper weight that also reduces postage and through some hard negotiation with various printers a considerable reduction in publication costs. These savings will have no impact on quality, page numbers per edition or editions per annum! The most significant saving has been a reduction of circa £14,000 on staff wages. This has been achieved by moving to a four day week and not having the office staffed on Fridays. All of our staff are to be commended for their positive involvement and cooperation during this review of staff requirements. We have now been operating a four day week for These savings have not been achieved without a great deal of effort and cooperation. Fred Boyd and Michele deserve our thanks as do the other members of the Staffing Group, Mick Luke and Dave Taylor, and of course our staff at Fox Road. While still on the theme of finance I can report that we are not only focussing on cost savings. Vice President Ronnie Dukes has been asked to look for potential sources of income generation. To that end Ronnie is more than three months without any expressions of concern from members.

fortunate to have her as a guest at the NCM at Torquay where Ronnie had the opportunity to learn from her success. Ronnie is also developing other ideas for income generation and I am sure that we will soon all be benefitting from the products of his efforts. Dave Taylor has just completed his first year as Secretary General. Soon after Dave came to the NEC it was agreed that there was a need to streamline the management and oversight of our staff. Dave now has sole responsibility for the day to day management of staff. Given his wider responsibilities to our staff he quickly identified the deficit that exists in our collective expertise around HR and employment legislation. A low cost remedy has been to engage a firm of employment specialists on a retainer basis. This is a real value for money initiative that provides an initial ‘health check’ around existing contracts and working conditions. More than that, it also provides us with legal protection and legal advice that effectively ensures that neither the Association nor our elected members will ever suffer financial liability. So you will recognise that this measure is also aligned to our objective of achieving and sustaining financial viability in the longer term.

currently reviewing all aspects of our webshop. He identified that Section Netherlands with a membership

of 7,000 has an average annual turnover of about 20,000 Euros compared to our average turnover of less that £2,500. It is the

recently appointed President of Section Netherlands, Johanna

Schotanus who developed the Dutch webshop over the last five years, and we were

Johanna Schotanus, President Section Netherlands and Tom Crozier, President Section UK

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Police World Vol 58 No.3 2013