THE threat of a strike by police staff has been lifted after the offer of a pay rise was doubled following negotiations over the Christmas and New Year period.

Police staff, including community support officers, forensics services and fingerprint experts, rejected an initial offer of a one per cent pay hike towards the end of last year, and as negotiations began to stall, union members agreed to take full strike action, set for tomorrow.

Around 600 members of Wiltshire Police are thought to be involved in the pay dispute as represented by the unions. Police officers, who are unable to be unionised, have already accepted a one per cent pay rise through the Police Federation.

At the last hour, the offer on the table to the unions has been more than doubled to 2.2 per cent, which has temporarily avoided the threat of industrial action.

Members of the trade union side of the Police Staff Council – which includes Unison, GMB and Unite – are recommending the offer is accepted.

Nick Maslen, branch secretary for Unison Wiltshire police and justice, said the offer will now go out to ballot and should be concluded within a month.

“The employers have now made an offer of 2.2 per cent starting from March for an 18-month period,” he said.

“We have not yet had the full bulletin or explanation, but because an offer has been made the strike has been called off.

“That offer will now be put to members as a ballot, and I think the view is this is going to be as good as we can get.

“We wanted a three per cent increase, but if this is the best that we can get my advice to members would be to accept it.

“Hopefully this should be resolved within a month.

“We welcome the offer but we are still disappointed it took the threat of strike action to get them back at the negotiation table when they could have been a little more flexible.”

Nick added that grave concerns still remain over the future of policing in Wiltshire as government cuts could rise to almost half of the entire budget with another five years of austerity.

“The obvious concerns as to the future of policing as a whole is that if the cuts from the current government continue into the next five year term, then British policing will have had funding cut by 41 per cent over 10 years,” he said.

“The question we need to be asking is what kind of police service do the British public want in the future?

“The cuts at the moment are unsustainable, and Wiltshire Police cannot exist in its current state with the cuts we are facing.

“There are talks about the regionalisation of policing, and economically I do not think there is any other choice.

“I am disappointed there is nobody in Wiltshire standing up asking the public what they want.”

Unison members in the police service work in jobs such as 999 call-takers, police community support officers, scenes-of-crime officers, fingerprint experts, financial investigators, detention officers, crime reduction officers, crime analysts, inquiry desk officers, trainers, criminal justice clerks, and a wide range of support roles.