Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The Prison Officers’ Association (POA) is so not impressed with proposals for existing staff to take annual fitness checks – which involve running several times between bollards 20 metres apart – that it is expected to vote against the idea, leading the Ministry of Justice to lose the £50m it had been given to ‘modernise’ the workforce in prisons.
Currently, new recruits have to take the test and only 10 out of 8000 have failed. And even if they fail that test, they can still be classified as fit enough if they get through a control and restraint exercise.
However, the row over the physical tests is thought to be masking the real issue, which is the plan to create a two tier workforce with existing officers stepping up to take on a new role designed to reduce prisoners’ offending behaviour (and being paid up to £29,500) and new ‘operational officers’ doing what existing prison officers do now for up to £25,000. According to Justice Secretary Jack Straw, this arrangement could save up to £100m over five years.
On the fitness test, Straw said: “We have to have a minimum level of fitness so officers can operate safely and protect other staff. Just as with the army or the police when you are dealing with the necessity to hold people with force you have to have people who are fit. It almost goes without saying.”
But POA general secretary Brian Caton said: “What we want to do, the same as the police, the same as the fire service, is to have an occupational health strategy that allows for prison officers to be tested to see if they are healthy enough to do the job, rather than whether they can run between two points x amount of times in a minute.”