Police to axe 173 jobs in bid to save more than $50m over four years

By RNZ

Police have confirmed a plan to shed more than 170 jobs.

In August, it consulted with staff on a proposal to cut 170 jobs, and confirmed on Wednesday that last week it landed on cutting 173.

Staff were informed of the final decision last week, and the changes related to its “non-constabulary” corporate workforce, strategy and performance deputy chief executive Andrea Conlan said.

“As the decision is about the disestablishment of positions, it won’t be known how many members of staff will be made redundant until the end of November, when the newly designed corporate workforce structure is put in place,” she said.

“For positions being disestablished, we are now skills-matching affected staff to potentially reassign them into new and vacant positions included in the consultation.”

The changes would save police $51.6 million over four years.

When the proposal was announced, the Police Association said most ‘corporate support’ jobs had an effect on the operational roles of frontline officers.

The proposed changes involve:

• Disestablishing 253 roles (of which 135 are currently vacant)
• Creating 80 new roles
• A net reduction of 173 roles

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