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Professional Development

Life on the Thin Blue Line

Martin Turner , Section UK VP (Professional) I hope that you and yours are well, and that your life is slowly heading towards some form of ‘normal’. I look forward to the day I can see my parents, and travel the world to see the many IPA friends I have made over the years. The pandemic has sadly seen a significant amount of my planned events and seminars shelved for now. This is a real disappointment, as I’m sure it is for many of you with similar events planned, but it is of course the safest option in current times. S o, what was I up to before lockdown you may ask! A few days after NCM I flew across to Gimborn Castle, to take part in the annual ‘Kuratorium’ to discuss the direction of the Seminar & Conference venue, and the seminars planned for 2020. The UK delivers several seminars at Gimborn every year and has a great relationship with the team there. I was keen to ensure topics chosen for seminars reflected policing issues faced in the UK, and that speakers reflected the diverse nature of our policing family in the UK. Some of the planned seminars have now been cancelled, others will be delivered online, and hopefully some will still go ahead later this year.

I spent the latter part of 2019 getting to grips with my new role, refreshing the printed material available for recruitment, and also wrote to all Chief Constables to ensure they were aware of the IPA, and to see if they were open to an approach from Branch and Region representatives. Part of my role is liaising with Regions allocated to me, and supporting Regions and Branches who may be struggling. I enjoyed working with the Warwickshire and Coventry Branch Committee to secure its future, and also meeting with the Warwickshire Chief Constable to improve links for the Branch. It was also a pleasure to attend the AGMs of Regions 3, 5 and 6 this year. In September 2019, I had the honour to represent Section UK at the 50th Anniversary of Gimborn celebrations in Germany. It truly is a wonderful venue, and I urge members to make the trip over when we can again travel. I increased the bursary value available to members this year to make it even more affordable. In October 2019, I travelled to Croatia to take part in the World Congress in Dubrovnik. This was my first World Congress and a real insight into the fine worldwide organisation that the IPA is. I told Congress about the many events being held in Section UK for our anniversary year in 2020. Sadly, many of these have now been postponed of course. In December 2019, I was lucky enough to be the only NEC member available to represent Section UK at Section Poland’s National Council Meeting. I spent a wonderful weekend in the far East of Poland, forging new friendships and making sure Section UK was well represented. Happily it resulted in an initial agreement for exchange programmes with Poland and Ireland for our UK members. I hope to work with the new ILDEP coordinator to sort the practicalities of these programmes and get them going next year.

The Young Members Forum was launched by Clive Wood and myself a few years ago. It continues to involve our younger, in-service members in generating ideas to modernise Section UK and continue evolving into the future. In February 2020 I combined the annual Young Members Forum meeting at Fox Road, Nottingham, with a meeting of some of our European friends. This allowed Section UK members to meet and form new friendships with members from across Europe. I have started to contact the many universities in England and Wales who will be hosting the new degree/apprenticeship routes into the modern UK police service. Local Branches will be linked in to provide a great recruitment opportunity. This work has already linked the University of Derby in with a university in Holland, to facilitate an exchange programme for both Dutch and UK student officers. Working with VP Sean Hannigan, I have set up Section UK Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts to advertise the benefits of the IPA. This has led to direct recruitment of members, and requests from various senior Police leaders to engage with the IPA for the development of their officers. I also encouraged membership of the Private Facebook group, and almost 1000 of our members are now part of the Section UK group. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with ideas, suggestions, constructive criticism or anything else! I can’t promise my reply will be swift, but I will certainly do my best.

POLICE WORLD Vol 65 No.3, 2020

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