Privy Council rules in police promotion case

THERE is nothing in law to prevent police officers who are still in their probationary period from writing promotion exams.

This was the decision of the Privy Council in an appeal by the Police Commissioner against a decision of the local Court of Appeal who, in 2015, ruled in favour of a now retired senior superintendent of police who challenged a decision by a former commissioner to block him from sitting promotion exams on the basis that he had not completed his probationary period in the service.

The commissioner was ordered to pay the cost of Seukeran Singh’s appeal at the London-based court.

The appellate court had declared that former commissioner James Philbert’s decision to block Singh from writing the assessment to the rank of senior superintendent was illegal and although he was eventually promoted, the litigation continued.

Singh was represented by attorneys Anand Ramlogan SC, Tom Richards, Chelsea Stewart and Alvin Pariagsingh while the commissioner was represented by Queen’s Counsel Thomas Roe.

Singh claimed he was treated unfairly and unequally when he was prevented from writing the promotions exam in 2008 because he did not serve out a full probationary period for the post of superintendent.

Under police rules, Singh was supposed to serve 12 months acting in the post before being allowed to follow through and to sit the promotions examination. However he was six days short of the 12-month period.

In a ruling delivered on Monday, five Privy Council judges ruled that while they were inclined to agree with the commissioner that a probationary officer was not entitled to require that he be permitted to write the qualifying examination, Singh was “entirely correct” that the top cop had wrongly interpreted the law.

They said there was no doubt a police officer in Singh’s position was eligible to write the qualifying examination for promotion within the First Division, notwithstanding that he had not yet completed his period of probation in his existing office.

“That probationer’s eligibility is therefore governed by the general provisions applicable to all probationers, and if he or she can proceed to write the examination, that demonstrates that there is no bar in law to officers who are still within their probationary period writing the examination.

“The Commissioner therefore proceeded upon a clear error of law. His interpretation of the legal provisions was one that simply was not open to him and the Board need not dwell further on his unpromising argument that it was open to him to proceed upon his own reasonable interpretation, even if it was wrong.

“As, in both the Second and the First Division, promotion is preceded by a qualifying examination, an officer who has reached the point of actually being promoted before completing his probation will have written the qualifying examination well within his probationary period,” Lady Jill Margaret Black wrote in the decision.

Black also noted, that whether an officer was entitled to write the examination while still in his probationary period was, however, a different question, but was not a question raised in the appeal.

In 2018, Singh was successful in his wrongful dismissal claim against the Strategic Service Agency (SSA). He held he post of assistant director of administration and the State entered a consent order, agreeing to pay him compensation.