It was gratifying to learn in the Forester last week that, in spite of losing 60 members of staff in a redundancy programme, Gloucestershire Constabulary would not experience any drop in performance. This was all very reassuring, but gradually I began to feel a certain unease about this statement. What were these 60 members of staff doing before they were sacked? Were they carrying out unnecessary work, or work that other members of staff could absorb? Are there any other members of the constabulary doing stuff that can be quietly forgotten without anyone noticing? Can we get rid of another 60 constabulary employees with no appreciable difference in the services provided to the people of Gloucestershire?

I can express an interest in this matter as I worked for the Metropolitan Police, for Avon & Somerset Constabulary and for my last 20 years as an information technology professional for Gloucestershire Constabulary, in information technology, or ‘data processing’, as it was called in the early pioneering days of computerised business processes. My wife worked as a senior civilian for the national police service of Papua New Guinea during our residence in that country in the 1980s. I have a great deal of respect for the police service, police officers, and essential police civilians providing essential services.

But surely if you can suddenly sack 60 people (perhaps around three per cent of the payroll) without any effect on the performance of the constabulary, then there must have been a considerable failure of staff management in failing to observe these superfluous employees carrying out unnecessary tasks, and a similar recruitment issue in bringing into the constabulary employees to carry out these unnecessary tasks. Are there any other civilian constabulary employees lurking around unobserved and apparently unmanaged? Can we carry out a further cull of these positions that add no value to the essential purpose of the constabulary, which is basically to keep people safe and to uphold the law?

It is sad that these superfluous employees were recruited in the first place. This is a failure on the part of the constabulary’s recruitment and job evaluation policies, not of the poor civilian employees carrying out as well as they can inessential job tasks which can be wiped out without any appreciable difference to the performance of the constabulary. It’s not their fault that the jobs they were recruited for can be suddenly cancelled.