Article 8: Recruitment of police trainees
12.Article 8 amends the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 relating to the temporary recruitment provisions concerning composition of the police (“50:50 recruitment”). In particular, it changes the police trainee recruitment procedures to allow the medical assessment and security vetting processes to take place after the merit order pool of candidates is established, instead of beforehand.
13.The policy objective is to allow the Chief Constable to make provisional police trainee appointments subject to the satisfactory completion of medical tests and security vetting. Should a candidate fail either part of these processes, the Chief Constable can provisionally appoint the next applicant on the merit order list, from the same community background, to replace the failed candidate. This will obviate the need for a large number of candidates, who will not be offered a police trainee position as they failed to score high enough in merit order, being subjected unnecessarily to the medical assessment and security vetting processes.
