Source Policy

Primary Sources We Use

• Pay: Police Regulations 2003 (as amended), the annual Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) reports and the Home Secretary's determinations implementing them.
• Pension: the Police Pension Regulations 1987, the Police Pensions Regulations 2006, the Police Pension Scheme 2015 Regulations, and the Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Act 2022 (McCloud remedy).
• Tax and National Insurance: current HMRC published rates and bands for the relevant tax year.
• Allowances: the relevant Home Office determinations for London Weighting, the Metropolitan and City of London allowances, and the South East Allowance.
• Force-specific detail: individual force careers pages and published vacancy data, where relevant.

What We Don't Treat As A Source

Forum posts, unverified social media claims, and other independent websites (including similar unofficial guidance sites) don't count as a primary source here, even when they're directionally useful for spotting a trend worth checking. If we can't trace a figure back to a regulation, a determination, or an official rate table, we don't publish it as fact.

When A Determination Hasn't Been Published Yet

Pay awards are sometimes announced (a headline percentage) before the statutory determination setting the exact new pay points is formally published. When that happens, we say so explicitly on the page — showing a calculated estimate based on the announced percentage, clearly labelled as pending the official determination, rather than presenting it as final.

When Sources Disagree

Where a Home Office announcement, a PRRB recommendation and an eventual determination differ from each other (which happens — a government can award less than a review body recommends, for example), we report the actual outcome as the figure to plan around, while noting what was recommended or claimed for context.