The Police have launched further legal action against Government for failing to honour another aspect of their controversial arbitration award.

The Bermuda Police Association is already heading for the Privy Council over Government's refusal to implement a "combined allowance" award amounting to ten percent of their pay.

The allowance was a feature of an arbitration award made by the Permanent Police Tribunal in June 2008.

Now a further writ has been issued by the BPA, relating to another part of that same award. This time, it complains, Government has ignored the section compelling it to compensate officers for increased payments to the Public Service Superannuation Fund that are not made by other branches of the civil service, or raise the Police retirement age from 55 to 65 instead.

The BPA's lawyer, Alan Dunch, filed the Supreme Court action against David Burch, the Minister of Labour, Home Affairs and Housing, on August 9. He is asking the court to enforce the relevant portion of the arbitration award.

Mr. Dunch explained last night: "As part of its case to support a higher increase in salaries, we invited the Permanent Police Tribunal to take account of the fact that Police officers had recently been legislated to pay increases in superannuation contributions over and above the contributions being paid by the civil service.

"Superannuation regulations in 2004 increased the contribution by Police officers by 1.5 percent per year over the period 2005 to 2008.

"The result of this is that Police officers are contributing 4.5 percent more to the pension fund than other members of the civil service.

"And having made Police officers pay a greater increase in their contributions, they did not give Police officers an increase in benefits. The consequence was an erosion of the take-home pay of a Police officer.

"We argued in arbitration that part of the increase in pay that we were looking for should include compensation for this increase in contributions to the superannuation fund."

The purpose of the Public Service Superannuation Fund is to provide pensions for retired employees of the Government of Bermuda as well as the employees of various quangos. It has been paying out more each year than it takes in, causing Government to supplement the funding out of general taxation while increasing deductions from civil service salaries to help make up the deficit.

Government argued during tribunal hearings that Police had to pay higher contributions due to having a lower retirement age, at 55, than the rest of the civil service, at 65.

The tribunal agreed with the Police position on the issue, stating in the arbitration ruling: "There may have been historic reasons for this to have been the case, but there was no evidence to suggest that it should continue. The tribunal therefore decided that the compulsory retirement age in the Police Service should be brought in line with the rest of the civil service. In the absence of this, there should be a further increase in pay equal to the percentage of wage deductions from pensions."

Mr. Dunch said last night: "That portion of the award has never been implemented by the Government. The BPA has endeavoured through discussion and correspondence to get the Government to implement it, but has failed. As a consequence of that, the decision was made that the only way to get it implemented was through enforcement proceedings in the Supreme Court."

The first court hearing of the matter is slated for September 9. Meanwhile, no date has yet been set for the Privy Council in London to hear arguments on the combined allowance dispute.

The BPA was involved in three years of negotiations with Government before the arbitration award was made by the Permanent Police Tribunal in June 2008.

The award gave them a 5.8 percent pay rise, plus a backdated five-percent salary increase for each of the years 2005-6, 2006-7 and 2007-8 and a $350 monthly housing allowance backdated to October 2005.

However, Government's refusal to recognise aspects of the award including the combined allowance and superannuation fund issues led officers to take the unprecedented step of marching on Parliament in protest.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Labour, Home Affairs and Housing was invited to comment, but declined to do so.