Our guest blogger is from Northern Ireland and this is the first in a series of blogs highlighting the problems being faced by RUC/PSNI officers/pensioners.
We know that something is wrong, seriously wrong the application of injury pension to officers of the RUC/PSNI, but what do the stats tell us?
A number of Freedom of Information requests were made to PSNI and all the police forces in England/Scotland/Wales.
The request to the Northern Ireland Policing Board (NIPB) can be seen here –
Ill Health Retirement Statistics 2017 to 2023 – a Freedom of Information request to Northern Ireland Policing Board
Please could you provide me with the following: 1 From jan 2017 until dec 2023 the total number of officers who have retired via the ill health retirement process 2 the “Bandings” of the Officers who were granted Ill health retirement in point 1 and were then subsequently awarded an Injury on Duty Award.
The PSNI provided stats for the period April 2019 to December 2023. The board refused to release the previous two years stats due to cost. We will return to this refusal in a future blog and believe that their reasons for this will become apparent.
Here are the results for PSNI –
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PSNI STATISTICS COVERING PERIOD JANUARY 2019 – DECEMBER 2023 (PSNI unwilling to provide stats for years 2017 and 2018) |
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| FORCE | NO RETIRED DUE TO ILL HEALTH |
INJURY ON DUTY AWARDS | NO OF OFFICERS AWARDED IOD | |||
| Band 1 | Band 2 | Band 3 | Band 4 | |||
| TOTALS | 398 | 271 | 73 | 123 | 75 | 0 |
| AVERAGE BANDINGS AWARDED BY NIPB | 27% | 45% | 28% | 0% | ||
What is striking is that over a four year period not one officer met the criteria for an injury award at Band 4. Perhaps we should qualify that statement, we believe that many officers would have met the criteria for a band 4 award, but none were granted.
The regulations define Band 4 as having “very severe disablement”. Anyone who understands how difficult policing was during the troubles will know that it left many officers with severe physical and mental health issues, many of who have never worked again.
Of course it can be said that stats can be misleading or interpreted in different ways, but they can also be an important way of presenting or understanding information.
During the career of an RUC/PSNI officer they will have been presented with many statistics; for crime, sickness or performance reasons such as action plans. Also for operational reasons, such as highlighting crime trends. They are even used by the Policing board to compliment or chastise the Chief Constable and their team.
These simple statistics should be viewed in the same manner and we’re sure that you can come up with one observation everyone can agree upon which is “Why were there no band 4’s given during this time period?”
It has been suggested that Band 4’s were granted prior to 2019, but we have no evidence of that. If any of our readers know of any, perhaps they could let us know?
It appears that more recently, the NIPB have started granting band 4’s again. Was this due to a change of staff in the NIPB, or the fact that pensioners started protesting, who knows? We’ll return to this in another blog.
So if you are reading these statistics and have already ignored them or think its just an anomaly, then your attention should be drawn to the table below –
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FOI FROM 93% OF REMAINING UK FORCES |
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| FORCE | NO RETIRED DUE TO ILL HEALTH |
INJURY ON DUTY AWARDS | NO OF OFFICERS AWARDED IOD | |||
| Band 1 | Band 2 | Band 3 | Band 4 | |||
| TOTALS | 3083 | 1053 | 201 | 272 | 261 | 269 |
| AVERAGE BANDINGS AWARDED ACROSS 42 UK CONSTABULARIES | 20% | 27% | 26% | 26% | ||
No one is suggesting that there aren’t problems in the rest of the UK administering injury pensions, as regular readers of our site will know only too well, but there is a marked difference in the award of bands with each of the bands having an equal spread across the four bands. Forces larger and smaller than the PSNI maintain this average. It believed that IODPA holding forces to account has assisted this more even spread, but there is certainly some thing very different going on in Northern Ireland, and this we know is not down to any minor differences in the various sets of regulations.
This is not a contest of who is more traumatised, and we don’t need to compare policing in the various areas of the UK. One incident could change your entire life no matter where you work.
These statistics shouldn’t be news to the PSNI and the local politicians. Our question is, what is being done about it?
We need to make RUC/PSNI officers aware of the way in which their injury pensions are being administered and those officers who are in possession of an injury pension or who are still in the process should come together. If this is happening to injured officers what support will serving officers receive?
Here at IODPA, we are here to support and advise you through the process. We have to help ourselves because no one else is going to.
If ever their was a quote that suits what is going on in Northern Ireland regarding Police injury payments, then this is it, as currently there appears to be absolutely no moral foundation for what is being done to officers, whose only crime was to try to protect the public.
Before I became aware of what was happening across the Irish Sea, I thought that the UK mainland police forces were bad, but Northern Ireland makes them now look like Mother Theresa!
This deceit and lawlessness has now gone on far too long and has now doubt been allowed to develop by the UK Government and its local agencies, who appears to tremble at the mere thought of upsetting certain parties in the Province.
Now that IODPA are involved, these biased civil servants and their lackeys, are going to learn that they don’t mess about and very specialised lawyers will be calling them into account in the public arena.
Let’s hope they read these comments, as I have a piece of advice for them…….
“Do your job according to the law as it’s stands, not as some might want”.
In the end it will be easier and if there is any doubt in what is being presented here, then speak to those forces on the mainland who have tried unlawful activities and come badly unstuck!
This has been driven for years by Gerry Kelly, Sinn Féin’s policing spokesman and convicted terrorist, who openly stated that retired officers are paid far too much money in both pension and IOD pension payments. When Naomi Long assumed the Minister for Justice position, he persuaded her that a “review” of the IOD pension scheme was necessary due to the costs involved. What’s ironic is that it was he and his comrades in arms who caused so many of the injuries suffered by former officers they forced to retire as a result of their injuries! It’s disgusting and I say this having been a victim of the IOD review or shafting process as I prefer to call it because SMP’s when I went through it were instructed to aggressively review anyone over a Band 2 IOD pension of which I was one and resulted in my banding being reduced from a Band 4 to a Band 2. The SMP “medical” reason……I was lazy and needed to get a job!!!
RUC/PSNI have the farce of only being able to use one solicitor’s company who in my view are inadequate and uncaring. They seem to have a different solicitor every month assigned to IOD’s and they lack knowledge and avoid proper legal challenge. In fact they now have a paralegal assigned to IODs.
Perhaps without any competition they are content to collect their fee from PFNI. This farce needs to be reviewed. RUC/PSNI officers deserve better representation in a very unusual policing environment.
IODPA offer a free 40 minute surgery with a solicitor who is a specialist in the area of injury pensions. You can then chose whether to engage them privately.
My first suspicion is that maybe NI officers know NOTHING about IOD Pensions? Maybe they think what they are receiving is just an ill health pension? Do the IOD officers even KNOW about the Banding system?
There have been so many IOD officers here in UK who have ONLY found out about them since iodpa.org started! Do another survey amongst members, to see how many IOD officers in UK didn’t discover about them for years after they were retired. These days they are being refused an IOD pension too! They are having yo fight to get them!
A certain member of staff has now left the NIPB.
In a sworn Affidavit to Mr. Scofield KC at a recent Judicial Review, she stated that if Band 4,s were awarded Applicants could apply for and WOULD BE GRANTED Reg. 11 gratuities. Shortly after that 5 applications were refused.
This is now at appeal level and when won, we will be going for them
Something is suspiciosly wrong regarding the PSNI IOD awards namely by the abscence of band four awards. It may be the case that the SMP’s tasked to make the awards for the PSNI are breifed differently or work to a different set of self made guidance as we have already been made aware of, ie that of Dr VIVIAN’s own making. Is this SMP still active on the mainland as if not it may be an indicator as to why band four is awarded or are the rules of granting IOD’s interpreted differently on the mainland. It would be interesting to see how many IOD decisions “Dr” VIVIAN made during the period of interest and what levels of injury he awarded compared to any other SMP’s also involved in the process as a method of pinpointing responsibility.
Another superbly wrtten piece. Well balanced and informative.
Well done to IODPA and all you do for the IOD community