The Police Pension Challenge (PPC) was established by a group of Greater Manchester Police officers in February 2015 in response to proposed changes to the Police Pension schemes and an underlying perception that the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) were failing in their responsibility to safeguard police officer terms and conditions of service.

The group quickly galvanised the support of circa 55,000 police officers across the UK and the small administration team, now consisting of officers from England, Northern Ireland and Scotland, began researching the prospects of legally challenging the introduction of the new CARE police pension scheme.  By November 2015, the PPC had obtained the legal support of Leigh Day Solicitors who began submitting claims to the Employment Tribunal arguing the use of Transitional Protections (TP’s), which afforded officers in the last 10 years of service and/or aged 45 and over, full protection (thus no change to their current financial retirement package or age) where discriminatory on the grounds of Age, Race and Sex as the TP’s disproportionately disadvantaged younger officers.  These claims, also known as the Arron and Others’ claims were stayed behind similar claims brought by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and Judiciary now widely referenced as the McCloud and Sergeant claims. All three litigations ultimately succeeded with the Government accepting liability July 2019 and by way of an industrial remedy, extending protections to all public sector workers up until March 31st 2022. 

Throughout this period the administration of the PPC sought to proactively and constructively engage with the PFEW, who had opted to support the application of TP’s and align itself with the Governments legal arguments, contrary to the best interests of its wider membership. Despite repeated attempts to persuade the PFEW as to the benefits of a legal challenge, the PFEW remained unpersuaded and unsupportive of the PPC. Worse still, the lack of support was not restricted to simply withholding financial assistance or a position of neutrality as requested in an early meeting in October 2015 between the PPC and the executive team at PFEW. Instead, it morphed into a position of hostility and a campaign which consistently presented a distorted, misleading and/or inaccurate assessment of what the PPC were trying to achieve.  

Following the Ministerial Statement of July 2019, the PFEW applied to be an interested party (07/10/2019) in the claims of Arron and Others and in May 2020 announced its intention to launch its own pension compensation claim, which sought to exclude those members who had originally brought claims via Arron and others. Members of the PPC group felt particularly aggrieved and attempted to negotiate with the PFEW requesting a contribution to their own legal costs, which were declined.  Despite several legal letters before action, the majority of which were not responded to, the PFEW refused to acknowledge the success of the PPC group litigation and refused legal contribution. Subsequently, 10,000 PFEW members brought legal action against there own staff association on the grounds of age discrimination and Victimisation. 

On the 6th June 2023 a damning judgment was handed down regarding the claims of Broadbent and Others v The Police Federation of England and Wales in which the PFEW were found to have actively discriminated against and victimised its membership. 

The backlash from the membership was swift and damning and led to calls for government to conduct an independent review of PFEW with Lee Broadbent, a lead claimant adding;

“In the absence of a trade union, police officers need a highly effective representative organisation to be their safeguard and voice to government and senior officers. Many officers, like me, are concerned that PFEW does not offer such representation and the recent tribunal judgment supports this view. The judgment and subsequent actions of the PFEW are, in my view, in breach of some or all of the duties that Parliament imposed on it. I therefore ask all police officers to support my calls for a public inquiry or externally led review of the Police Federation of England and Wales and petition the Home Secretary accordingly.”

Whilst the Government of the day declined to intervene the PFEW launched Operation Sunrise and announced its intention to instruct an independent panel to review what went wrong and what could be done to make the Federation fit for the future.  

Whilst the report has provided another damning assessment of PFEW culture, practices and attitudes towards its membership, many fear that the PFEW is still unwilling or able to bring about the scale of reform required to recapture the trust and confidence of its membership.  These fears and beliefs are not unreasonable given this the second such independent review to be conducted in 10years, the first being the Normington published in 2014.   In this regard many serving police officers are calling for reforms to go much further and are asking for a reimagining of the police representative landscape adding choice to a monopolised provision. 

Such reimagination would require amendments to the Police Act 1996 to allow officers the ability to form a new representative body, with the freedom to associate and assemble without discrimination or fear of retribution and/or retaliation and capable of making representations to Government, stakeholders and Chief Police Officers on matters concerning their Pay, Conditions, other Employment related matters, and welfare.