Scottish police officers to receive 5% pay rise after months of negotiations

Police officers in Scotland will receive a 5 per cent pay raise backdated to April following months of deadlock.

The agreement was struck after protracted negotiations involving the Scottish Government and the Scottish Police Authority.

The breakthrough also comes a month-and-a-half after Scottish Police Federation (SPF) members withdrew “all goodwill”, which saw officers refuse to start shifts early, end their shifts on time, and claim all worked overtime for payment.

This had been labelled as the “most overt demonstration of action” within the police force in more than a century by Calum Steele, the federation’s general secretary.

By law, police officers cannot take industrial action.

The SPF said the agreement had been “hard fought for” and represented a “substantial improvement” on the initial offer of a flat rate increase of £565, equivalent to an increase of around 1.4 per cent.

The union added the increase in pay would “mitigate some of the cost-of-living pressures”, but would not “entirely address them”.

The agreement comes after Unison, which represents thousands of council workers, rejected a 3.5 per cent pay offer from Cosla, the representative body of Scottish local authorities.

Police officers in Scotland will receive a five per cent pay rise following months of negotiations.

Strike action by council workers will now go ahead after union members labelled the offer as “derisory” pay offer.

A fresh offer was made by local authority body Cosla on Friday, after an initial 2 per cent pay increase was rejected.

But at a meeting on Monday, Unison unanimously agreed to reject the revised 3.5 per cent offer outright and voted overwhelmingly to continue with their strike plans at councils across Scotland.

Waste and recycling workers will walk out between August 26 and 29 as well as between September 7 and 10.

Members of GMB Scotland’s local government committee have also rejected the offer and warned strikes would be unavoidable unless a “significantly improved offer” was urgently tabled.

Johanna Baxter, head of local government at Unison Scotland, said: “This is another derisory pay offer.

“We are in a ridiculous position of both our employers and the Scottish Government agreeing this 3.5 per cent pay offer is not nearly enough, but both are at loggerheads about who should pay for it.

“Meanwhile council workers – over half earn less than £25,000 per year – are worrying about paying the bills.

“Inflation is predicted to rise to 13.5 per cent and our members are offered a real-terms pay cut, which will plunge more of them into debt.

“We have written to Cosla to tell them the strike continues in waste and recycling and we will confirm dates for strike action in schools and early years in the coming days.”

Unison said it had rejected the offer as it has not sufficiently improved, falls far short of the Joint Trade Union’s claim (submitted in January) and falls far short of the current rate of inflation, which continues to rise.

Unison members in Aberdeenshire, Clackmannanshire, East Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire, Stirling and South Lanarkshire have said they will walk out.Scotland’s local government secretary Shona Robison said on Friday the new pay offer to council workers must be reconsidered “urgently” and described the latest proposal as “extremely disappointing”.

The fourth episode of the brand new limited series podcast, How to be an independent country: Scotland’s Choices, is out now.

It is available wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.