Police spend $9m on uniform costs

The bill to taxpayers for clothing police and dry-cleaning their uniforms last year was more than $9 million. Figures released under the Official Information Act reveal police forked out $1.08 million on dry-cleaning, $5.5 million on clothing (2011-12 financial year) and $2.46 million for plain-clothes allowance (2012 calendar year).

In an effort to slash the dry-cleaning bill, police were about to trial new trousers for operational staff that could be washed rather than dry-cleaned, Police National Headquarters finance general manager John Bole said.

A decision on the new trousers was expected within 18 months, he said.

Police had ''no intention'' of following overseas examples and changing operational staff uniform to a more relaxed uniform of baseball caps and overalls, he said.

Uniform overalls and baseball caps were supplied to selected specialist police groups, including the dog section, commercial vehicle investigation unit and specialist search staff.

Mr Bole said new recruits were issued with standard uniform items and any replacement of those items was at the discretion of their police district.

''Items are replaced in response to reasonable wear and tear and taking account of the type of duties the officer is undertaking and the impact on uniform items.''

He confirmed the most common clothing items to be replaced were socks and shirts.

As part of a collective employment agreement, detectives were provided with a plain-clothes allowance, which was paid to CIB staff on a fortnightly basis.

Those employees were also entitled to have three uniforms dry-cleaned every six months. Annual clothing allowances payments have increased from $2.288 million in 2009 to $2.463 million last year.

While clothing allowances for CIB staff had increased, the cost of police clothing had decreased from $6.9 million in 2007-08 to $5.5 million in 2011-12.

Southern district police spent $77568 on dry-cleaning and laundry during 2011-12, down from a high of $80,000 the previous year.

The largest laundry bill went to Central district police with $115,647, followed by Waitemata ($111,960) and Canterbury ($98,979).

- hamish.mcneilly@odt.co.nz