12,000 sick days for stressed out police

Jul 4 2010 by Kerry Wood, Sunday Sun

THE serious levels of stress affecting cops in the North East has been revealed after they took more than 12,000 days off last year.

Latest figures for 2009/10 reveal the equivalent of almost 25 years were lost as police called in sick suffering from a host of stress-related illnesses.

Staff on the frontline of two of the region’s forces, Northumbria and County Durham, have been hit hard in the past 12 months with soaring stress levels leaving them unable to do their jobs.

Northumbria Police employs 4,100 officers and almost 8,400 days went unworked because of issues including stress, depression and anxiety.

Durham Police, which has fewer than 2,000 officers, saw 3,956 days lost for similar issues, compared with 2,582 days missed in 2007/08 and 2,408 in 2006/07.

The force’s stress sickness record has been linked by unions to a tightening of the purse strings as Durham has not taken on any new officers for the past two-and-a-half years.

Andrew Metcalfe, chairman of Durham Police Federation, said: “Policing is a very stressful occupation, and as the number of police officers fall, the same workload has to be carried out by a smaller workforce.

“They are doing an excellent job but officers are being asked to perform at a greater level, and stress levels go up.

“The lack of recruitment is down to finances and it is inevitable as the number of officers fall, the workload is shared out among those left, and it may well be having a knock-on effect on stress levels and people going sick. Police deal with extremely difficult people and situations and officers are only human. They are not supermen and women.”

A Durham Police spokesman said: “The number of sick days taken by officers varies from year to year and the increase compared to the previous two years does not give us any particular concerns.”