Vacancy Information
Grade - Grade 8
Status - Full Time
Contract Type - Permanent
Salary Grade Range - £21,507 plus an unsocial shift allowance in the region of £5,000 per annum
Working Hours - 37.0 Hours per Week
We’re hiring more Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) and we want you to join us.
As the key link with communities across Sussex, our PCSOs play a critical and visible role in helping keep our communities safe, identifying and protecting the most vulnerable and preventing harm.
In return, we promise you a good starting salary, great training experiences, opportunities for progression, the chance to achieve a professional qualification - Level 4 Diploma in Community Policing Practice - and the pride that comes from helping others.
The Role
Our PCSOs play a vital part in keeping Sussex safe.
Being a PCSO offers a challenging, yet incredibly rewarding career. Working alongside our policing prevention teams to prevent and tackle local issues; you’ll be out and about on the streets of Sussex, building relationships and winning the trust of the public
You will encounter a range of situations. From dealing with anti-social behavior, taking statements from victims of crimes to providing reassurance and helping resolve community challenges, you’ll be the face of local policing for the community, ensuring we meet our policing priorities. Some of the duties you could find yourself doing include:
- Going on highly visible foot patrols.
- Reassuring the public after minor crimes or anti-social behaviour.
- Building relationships with community, religious and business leaders.
- Working with young people and local schools.
- Making house visits to gather intelligence.
- Collecting CCTV evidence.
- Carrying out missing person enquiries.
- Protecting crime scenes until police officers arrive.
- Providing crime prevention and personal safety advice.
- Offering support at large public gatherings, such as sports events and public demonstrations.
While PCSOs do not have powers of arrest and cannot interview or process prisoners: they do have other powers for a wide range of situations including issuing fixed penalty notices, requiring contact details and seizing drugs. You can find out more about PCSO powers on the Sussex Police website careers section.
By successfully completing the recruitment process, you will join Sussex Police as a PCSO through our new 12-month apprenticeship programme. This will give you the best possible training and, upon successful completion, you will achieve a Level 4 Diploma in Community Policing Practice – equivalent to a Higher National Certificate (HNC), foundation degree or the first year of an undergraduate degree.
Could this be you?
As the first point of contact for the community, you’ll need to be a great communicator; calm, confident and compassionate. You’ll need to be able to listen carefully, think through challenges and find solutions. Above all, you’ll simply care about the community and want to do what you can to keep it safe.
It’s a challenging role, but also incredibly rewarding. If you want to help keep your community safe, then join us now and help make a difference, together.
What we offer you
We value all our staff and provide many benefits (link to the benefits section on the website here?).
For PCSOs the pay and holiday benefits are as follows:
- Starting salary of £21,507 plus unsocial hours shift allowance in the region of £5,000 per year.
- Fully-funded professional qualification – Level 4 Diploma in Community Policing Practice.
- 24 days per year annual leave, rising to 29 days (based on a working day of 7.4 hours) depending on your length of service.
- A competitive benefits package including pension, flexible benefits, employee assistance programme for advice and counselling, access to discounts / savings / cash-back rewards.
- A progressive approach to flexible working, enhanced maternity and paternity leave and potential for a career break (after two years’ service).
- Opportunities to join various support networks, staff associations and sports clubs.
Are you eligible?
The following are our key eligibility criteria:
- You must be aged 18 at date of application – no upper age limit
- You must have lived in the UK for three continuous years immediately prior to application
- Have leave to enter or leave to remain and work in the UK for an indefinite period
- Have a full UK manual driving licence (by the time of appointment)
- Not be a member of the British National Party (BNP) or other relevant organisations
- Not have tattoos which could cause offence (see our PCSO FAQs)
- Not have more than six penalty points
- Not have served a prison sentence
It is a requirement that individuals must have achieved Level 2 functional skills / GCSE in both Maths and English in order to complete the apprenticeship, if you do not hold both of these at the time of appointment we will support you in attaining them alongside your apprenticeship studies.
For all our eligibility criteria please see our Frequently Asked Questions attached below.
Additional Information
As a PCSO, you will work shifts. You will have a rotating shift pattern covering the full week Monday to Sunday between the hours of 8:00am and midnight, so you will need to be prepared to work weekends and Bank Holidays. The standard shift pattern is in the attached Frequently Asked Questions.
We are looking for successful applicants to join us on training intakes in March and July 2020.
The role of PCSO is tenured for 24 months, meaning that you will not be able to start a new position within the force during this time. You may however be able to apply for roles with longer recruitment timeframes e.g. police officer.
In addition to standard vetting requirements, this requires the post-holder to successfully pass biometric vetting. Successful applicants who receive a conditional offer of employment for this role will be required to provide fingerprint and DNA samples by consent. A speculative search against local and national databases will take place prior to appointment and any final offer of employment will be conditional upon the results meeting the required vetting standard. Upon appointment the fingerprint and DNA profile for the post-holder will be added and retained on the respective Police Elimination Database (PEDb), to be used for elimination purposes.
Diversity Statement
Sussex Police are committed to providing quality in the service we deliver, the career opportunities we offer our people and to increase the diversity of our workforce to reflect the community we serve. We value diversity and inclusion and want to attract the best people for the roles available regardless of age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex, disability, social status and religious beliefs. We want to do all we can to encourage fair and inclusive opportunities, helping us to ensure that all individuals are properly supported and represented. We are committed to the elimination of unfair discrimination and we are determined to ensure that all or employees receive fair and equitable treatment. We are particularly keen to hear from applicants who are from different ethnic backgrounds and experiences.
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