Hi I am currently a serving police officer in the UK and am looking into the possibillity of transferring to Australia. I have been reading these forums for a while now and have visited www.immi.gov.au, but am still basically confused as to whether or not its possible?

Firstly from looking at the force websites (sapol, wapol, nsw and victoria) I have found they are asking for people to be australian citizens or have permenant residency to apply; they also say they will not sponser visa applications. So my question is - is it possible to get permenant residency while working and living in the UK when the police are not on the "wanted jobs list"? And do forces ever recruit overseas applicants with prior policing experience who are not citizens or have PR? Or are there any other routes in which I am not aware of?

Finally if anyone on here has made the move, I would appreciate knowing how you did it and what you find to be the similarities and differences between policing in the UK and in Australia.

Thanks

Hi There,

In short, at the moment you cannot obtain PR through your police qualifications / experience. Most of the people i know out here in the job from the UK obtained PR through their spouses, who are nurses, teachers, whatever (so they obtained the PR on the basis of the skills / experience of their spouses.)

West Oz Police, and South Oz Police went through a stage of recruiting cops from the UK, but this has finished now. All you can do is keep monitoring their websites to see if they ever commence another UK recruitment campaign, but who knows if this will ever take place.

As for the job there are some things that are better, some worse, the job is the job where ever you are in the world, what is important is to be coming here primarily for the lifestyle.

Thanks for your help, I will continue to moniter their websites and hope they decide to do another UK intake.

NZ Police are rumoured to be planning a recruitment from the UK. Maybe keep an eye on the NZ Newcops web site. Not sure of immigration requirments but also maybe worth researching NZ.

Thank you for your reply are you a police officer in NZ or Australia. I will keep an eye on their website for any changes. At the moment the police isn't on the list of wanted occupations for NZ, but if they do have a recruitment drive in the UK then would this maybe change?? Or would they only want people who can get their PR through a different route??

I'm applying at the moment so I've ben reading through a few recruitment forums.

Police Forum .com is a good site http://www.police-forum.com/index.php that was set up a couple of years ago when SApol (Southern Aus Police) and WApol (Western Australia)were recruiting brits. However, you need to sign up to the forum to see all the forum boards.

You can look back on all the information and see what WApol and SApol do when recruiting. Well worth a look. Also lots of info on police recruitment and immigration in general. It's still a live site but not much is happening on it at the moment.

Hope this helps. Good luck

Hi,
There have been mixed messages on SAPOL recruiting from the uk again. I've had a few emails over the last few months, some saying they will be recruiting soon and some saying that there are no plans at the moment.
SAPOL's website has changed recently and they are now recruiting from NZ but they are still asking interested parties in the UK to register their interest by email, so may be a positive sign.
Maria

I noticed that the SAPOL website has been updated and while there appears to be no definitive nod for international applicants there is an email to register interest which is a good sign for some future movement.

I think I've been on all the website's and I've already registered my interest on SAPOL's website, so now will patiently wait and hope that one day there will be a reply

Hi Kirtsy-Chantelle

I hope you dont mind me asking but like you, Im pretty new to this and just wondered what form of documents you sent to 'Register your interest'?

Do you know what the Australian Police prefer i.e. CV, letter of application, both?

Any advice would be great.

Have you heard anything back yet? Good Luck!

Thanks

You don't have to send any documents to register your interest and at the moment you can only register with sapol. Just go to achievemore.com.au and click on the union jack then it gives you the option of registering your interest by clicking a link and leaving your email address.
None of the other forces in Australia are accepting expressions of interest and wapol ask you not to get in touch at all
HTH
Maria

I emailed them the other day to register my interest(SAPol)

Got a reply saying thank you, but at this time we are not recruiting. But details will be kept on file.

There is some reliable information that they are going to reopen uk recruitment very soon and they have apparently had 50 visas approved by the government.
Possible they could make the announcement early March as that is when the NZ recruitment closes.