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Officers are being pushed to breaking point by unsustainable workloads, chronic fatigue and mounting pressure, the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) has warned.
Now the Federation has declared a public health emergency in British policing.
Addressing PFEW’s Annual Conference on Day Two of the event, acting deputy national chair Paul Williams said the service was ‘taking too much’ from its officers.
He said workloads, exhaustion, exposure to trauma and the loss of experienced officers were damaging the health of the officers expected to protect the public.
“Policing is a broken service that is breaking its people,” he said. “More than 15 years of cuts have hollowed out the service, while falling morale, concerns about pay and mounting pressures have become entrenched.
“This is no longer simply a morale problem. It is a public health emergency.”
The Federation’s 2026 Pay and Morale Survey, which received 18,537 responses from officers across the federated ranks, found that 78 per cent had experienced stress, low mood or anxiety in the past year. Of those, 94 per cent said their work had caused or worsened their condition.
Two-thirds of respondents said fatigue had made it difficult to carry out their duties, while 76 per cent reported that exhaustion had affected their family or social life.
The survey highlighted the impact of excessive workloads, including detectives investigating child abuse carrying caseloads of 40, 50 or more, and officers losing rest days, having annual leave refused and working overtime to cover gaps in staffing, Paul said.
Paul warned that fatigue and pressure were contributing to the loss of inexperienced officers.
The survey found that officers serving between three and five years reported the lowest happiness and the highest levels of fatigue and anxiety.
Two-thirds of all police officer resignations come from officers reaching the five-year point in their careers.
“These are not isolated cases. They are hallmarks of a system failing the people it relies upon,” he said.
Now PFEW is calling for an independent investigation into the health, wellbeing and welfare of officers during their first five years of service.
The investigation would combine available data with officers’ lived experiences to identify practical measures to improve support.
The Federation has also written to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood calling for recognition of the crisis and urgent action to address the pressures facing officers.
Paul also highlighted the gravest consequences of the crisis, saying nearly 20 officers die by suicide each year.
The Federation has campaigned for national recording of police suicides and suicide attempts, common minimum standards for wellbeing and suicide-prevention training.
He said: “Our message to government and policing leaders is clear: enough is enough.
“Enough of treating exhaustion as commitment. Enough of treating experience as expendable. Enough of asking officers to give more when they have nothing left to give.
“We have a broken service to fix, a profession to defend and a future to fight for. And we are going to fight for it.”