Maybe Warwickshire & West Midlands forces should have retired all those officers a couple of years back, but I suppose these new officers will be cheaper to employ.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-27267067

The problem is when you go through these iterative processes, you lose all your experience. Far better to have a gradual rolling programme.

A certain auto manufacturer got itself into difficulties and offered redundancy as a way of reducing its costs. All those with plenty of service left because they were offered such big payouts. The company was left with raw graduates and lots of enthusiasm. Not exactly good for designing and producing top end cars. The company eventually realised how it had screwed up and offered many of those that had taken redundancy their old jobs back. I understand very few were interested.

For over 15 years, that company hasn't been able to design/produce cars without outside help. - And it isn't alone.

A bit like the NHS then? It got rid of experienced nurses that would cost a lot in redundancies and gave the less experienced nurses their jobs but at a lower salary. Now the fruits of that decision is showing in the dire shortage of experience and the race to recruit nurses with values that were built into those they said were too expensive. They lead by example- there aren't many left to do this very fundamental thing.

Again Gladys, MBA business schools have a lot to answer for!