Reform of Ill-health Retirement Benefits for Police in England and Wales: The roles of National Policy and Local Finance

This paper examines the ill-health retirement of police officers in the forces of England and Wales between 2002-03 and 2009-10. Differences in ill-health retirement rates across forces are statistically related to area-specific stresses of policing and force-specific differences in human resources policies. Reforms to police pension plans – in particular a shift in the incidence of financing ill-health retirement from central government to local police authorities – occurred in the mid-2000s. We show these measures impacted on the level of ill-health retirement, especially on forces with above-average rates of retirement. We find that residual differences in post-2006 ill-health retirement rates across forces are related to their differential capacities to raise revenue from local property taxes.