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Mandatory training for firearms enquiry officers in England and Wales


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A nationally-accredited training programme will be rolled out across all 43 firearms licensing departments in England and Wales. The College of Policing has been provided with a £500,000 fund to implement the training course that will be mandatory for all firearms enquiry officers, caseworkers and decision makers. It is expected to be rolled out in 2024. The training programme will be combined with a new Authorised Professional Practice (APP) that has been produced by the College of Policing. 

Click here for a press release

Click here for more information

 

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And more fuel to the fire to demand "full cost recovery" from FAC, SGC and RFD holders no doubt.

£500,000 ÷ 43 = £11,000 per force or constabulary.

And no guarantee those "new normals" they'll be told to enforce will as "commonsense' as in some forces.

For those with fair and reasonable FEO and licensing departments this may well turn out to be far from being to our benefit!

As they say "be careful what you wish for". The law of unintended consequences.

Edited by enfieldspares
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Can’t believe that they are not trained to a standard already 

seems ludicrous to have firearms license officers who haven’t been trained to do the job to a standard 

seems like 1/2 a million £ to train how many from each force maybe 3 so 150 people that is a lot of training time 

wonder who is going to supply the training?

 

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It seems to me that people just want to bash basc.they are not perfect and I don't agree with all their policies,in fact I am not a member.however they do 'have a go'.we can all only look forward not backwards.or sit on your hands and Mourne the loss of shooting.jmho.

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1 hour ago, Mr grumpy said:

It seems to me that people just want to bash basc.they are not perfect and I don't agree with all their policies,in fact I am not a member.however they do 'have a go'.we can all only look forward not backwards.or sit on your hands and Mourne the loss of shooting.jmho.

What did I miss?

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12 minutes ago, Newbie to this said:

What did I miss?

You will find on here and on other forums,that people want to decry basic,aka slag them off.no matter what they do.the original post is from a basc representative 

Edited by Mr grumpy
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Certainly a step in the right direction, it wont stop illegal use of firearms whatsoever but i suppose for Joe public they may see this as the force are doing something right in their eyes. 

I would like to see accountability for the police force failing's made public and not additional processes to cover them up. 

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5 minutes ago, Mr grumpy said:

You will find on here and on other forums,that people want to decry basic,aka slag them off.no matter what they do.the original post is from a basc representative 

just because you disagree with their opinion on basc it does not entitle you to slag them of for having one 

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39 minutes ago, Mr grumpy said:

You will find on here and on other forums,that people want to decry basic,aka slag them off.no matter what they do.the original post is from a basc representative 

I see, so just a preemptive strike, I thought some comments had been deleted, as I couldn't see any slagging BASC off.

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19 hours ago, Old farrier said:

Can’t believe that they are not trained to a standard already 

seems ludicrous to have firearms license officers who haven’t been trained to do the job to a standard 

seems like 1/2 a million £ to train how many from each force maybe 3 so 150 people that is a lot of training time 

wonder who is going to supply the training?

 

They will be trained internally, and given operational guidelines based on the forces own training protocols, with supervision from the senior officer in charge of the licensing unit. What is more menacing is whether this ‘new groupthink’ is a particular angle more lead by the rampant Home Office underlings who basically hate us being able to shoot anything better than a solid gun. If the message is as all encompassing and draconian as that which NHS staff adopted from their ‘top down’ managerial system during ‘Covid’, then look out! 

18 hours ago, Dave at kelton said:

So at last we will have consistency for all FEOs at the start. Whether we then get consistency of decision making based on such training only time will tell but I cannot for the life of me understand why this is a bad thing.

As stated in my reply above, if the training is fair, proportionate and professional, without compromising the rights of the shooting community then I couldn’t agree more. It’s when this ‘training’ could be now or in the future updated to push an agenda from outside the Policing College’s control.

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21 hours ago, Old farrier said:

Can’t believe that they are not trained to a standard already 

seems ludicrous to have firearms license officers who haven’t been trained to do the job to a standard 

seems like 1/2 a million £ to train how many from each force maybe 3 so 150 people that is a lot of training time 

wonder who is going to supply the training?

 

They aren't trained to a *common* standard. You are lucky to be in one of the country's lead counties with regards to firearms. 
That may fill you with happy, or dread......

A lot of that training will be the development of e-learning via the PNN learning resources, with content, videos, knowledge checks etc. How they will do anything on top will be interesting also, I suspect a train the trainer, with annual meetings of the force leads.

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30 minutes ago, HantsRob said:

They aren't trained to a *common* standard. You are lucky to be in one of the country's lead counties with regards to firearms. 
That may fill you with happy, or dread......

A lot of that training will be the development of e-learning via the PNN learning resources, with content, videos, knowledge checks etc. How they will do anything on top will be interesting also, I suspect a train the trainer, with annual meetings of the force leads.

Maybe a little interaction between sporting shooters would be helpful for the trainer to maybe see what safety level we operate at would be advantageous for those officers that arnt from a shooting background 

a good start would be at clay ground or rifle club 

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It beggars belief that FEO’s don’t receive training, and the D&C FEO in question stated as his get out of jail free card, that he never received any training!
What does that say about those tasked with the responsibility of ensuring public safety? These are the people who have resisted all efforts for the licensing of firearms to be removed from their remit. 🤷‍♂️

Where is the accountability? 

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This all stems from the actions of the FEO in the Keynsham shooting. Despite many years of experience, he stated at the inquest that it wasn't his fault because he had not received formal training. The Coroner made a "Prevention of future deaths" report that advocated formal training and consistent standards, and this is the result. Whether or not it will add anything to public safety or not remains to be seen, but my immediate reaction is that £11,000 per force is a tiny amount of money - let's call it 3 months wages for one trainer, but if it's contracted out to one of the "experts" such as Capita then 20 training days per force may be more realistic . . .

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