About Police Pay News

Who we are

Police Pay News is the news desk of PolicePay (policepay.co.uk), an independent website of calculators and plain-English guides on pay, pensions and careers for police officers, police staff and people joining the police in the UK.

What we cover

National, official news about the working life of police officers and police staff: pay, pensions, careers, recruitment, exams, welfare and wellbeing, official statistics and conditions of service. Our sections are:

• Pay: Pay awards, allowances and overtime.
• Pensions: Police pension schemes, increases, the McCloud remedy and the LGPS for police staff.
• Police staff: Pay, terms and news for police staff and PCSOs.
• Careers: Promotion, specialist roles, leaving the police, second careers, retire and rejoin.
• Recruitment: Entry routes, recruitment windows and vetting standards.
• Exams: Sergeant, inspector and NIE exam dates, results and reforms.
• Welfare and wellbeing: Oscar Kilo, mental health support, occupational health, Police Care UK, assaults on officers as national statistics, fatigue and family support.
• Stats and data: Home Office workforce figures, pay and morale survey results and HMICFRS national findings.
• Conditions and rights: Rest days, leave, maternity and paternity, flexible working, regulations, determinations and Home Office circulars.
• Equality and inclusion: Representation statistics, positive action policy and national networks' published reports.
• Training and CPD: College of Policing guidance, licensing, PEQF and entry route changes.

What we never cover

• Crime stories.
• Named individual misconduct or criminal cases, whether they involve officers, staff or anyone else.
• Live proceedings: court cases, inquests, misconduct hearings or tribunals while they are under way, or anything under reporting restrictions.
• Police Federation or union politics, such as internal disputes or elections. A formally published pay claim, ballot result or survey result is news we do report.

Welfare stories use national figures only, with no graphic detail and no individual cases. Where relevant they point to support such as Oscar Kilo and Police Care UK.

How we choose stories

• Primary sources only. We report from the original document: the ONS release, the Home Office statistics, the regulation, the circular or the union's or employer's own statement. We never report from another news report.
• Something has to have changed. A story needs a new official decision, publication, statistic or published survey that we can explain in terms of what it means for officers or staff. Reaction with no new fact is not a story.
• Every fact is sourced. Each article lists its sources with the date we read them. Figures we work out ourselves are labelled "by our calculation". A hope, a claim or a forecast is never reported as a decision. The headline must not overstate the news.

How every article is checked

No article is published until it passes an independent check against its primary sources.

1. The article is drafted from the primary sources, with every fact traced to a source listed on the article.
2. A separate check, run apart from the drafting, opens each source again and checks every number, date, name and claim against it. That includes the figures in charts, the headline and the "What it means for you" points, which must not mislead. It also checks the article against the rules on this page.
3. If anything fails, it is fixed and the whole article is checked again from the start.
4. If a fact cannot be confirmed from a primary source, the article is held and not published until it can be.
5. Once it passes, the article goes live with its sources and its Published and Updated times shown.

How we use AI

AI tools help us find new official releases, research them and draft articles. The independent check is also run by an AI tool, working separately from the one that drafted the article. It checks the article against the sources themselves. AI is never a source: every fact must come from a primary source listed on the article.

Every article is published under Andrew Thomas's name and responsibility. He sets the rules, reviews published articles and corrects them openly when something is wrong. We do not publish invented quotes, figures, testimonials or images of people; the graphics are charts and figure cards built from the article's sourced numbers. Our AI use disclosure covers the rest of the site.

Corrections

When we correct a published figure, date, name or claim, we add a dated correction note to the article saying what it said and what it says now, update its Updated time and list it in the public corrections log. We do not quietly change facts. Typo and formatting fixes are not logged. Our corrections policy has the detail.

To report an error, email andrew@policepay.co.uk or use the contact page. Tell us the article, the figure or claim and the source you are checking it against.

Independence and how PolicePay makes money

PolicePay is independent. It is not part of, funded by or endorsed by any police force, the Police Federation, a union, the Home Office or the College of Policing.

PolicePay makes money in three ways:

• Paid tools and reports sold on the site, each priced openly on its page.
• A few clearly labelled affiliate links, explained in our affiliate disclosure.
• Recruitment and brand partnerships, labelled as such wherever they appear.

None of this decides what we cover or what an article says. Paid products never appear in the text of a news article. Where an article page shows one, it sits after the end of the article in a box labelled "Advert: PolicePay product". Our free tools, guides and newsletter boxes are labelled "From PolicePay". Welfare articles never carry a paid offer.

Read and follow

• All articles: Police Pay News, latest published 22 October 2026.
• RSS feed of every new article.
• The Police Pay LinkedIn page, where each article is posted.
• Our news standards and editorial policy.