Sheriff’s Office Joint Consultative Committee update
The quarterly Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) was held on Thursday 28 August 2025 with PSA industrial staff and Sheriff’s Office Vocational Branch Advisory Group (SOVBAG) delegates and the NSW Sheriff’s Office senior leadership team.
Below are the key highlights:
Certificate III training
The Certificate III training is starting to open up and has commenced rolling out. If you are a Sheriff intending to retire prior to February 2027 you do not need to complete the Cert III training.
Flexible Working Hours Award
The PSA raised with management the issue that staff were forfeiting flex hours as a result of not being able to take their accrued flex hours within the settlement period. The PSA proposed that a Flexible Working Hours Award be created to specifically detail provisions to reduce the amount of forfeited flex or adequately remunerate staff who are unable to use their accumulated flex leave resulting in forfeited flex leave.
The PSA will forward a draft proposal to the Sheriff’s office after consultation with SOVBAG delegates.
CCTV
The Sheriff’s Office is currently developing a secure area network that will have statewide coverage. CCTV is currently all locally set up, and not networked requiring maintenance to be done locally.
The Sheriff’s Secure Area Network will be one network with the ability for all CCTV to be accessed remotely and managed remotely.
The duress signal notification capability during an incident will mean that the relevant staff can login and access the local CCTV to view what is occurring. Management assured delegates that the remote access will not be utilised to observe staff working.
The Surveillance policy is available on the staff portal .
Information Technology developments
An intranet is being developed to house policies and other information. This will make information more readily available to staff.
An online rostering platform is being developed to enhance the rostering capability. This will be rolled out centre-by-centre for Sheriffs over a three month period and toward the end of the project for Court Officers. The online rostering system will provide visibility of rostering across the state. Tablet devices will be made available at court entrances to record staff entrance and exits.
Field laptops (Windows II) will be issued for each vehicle as well as thermal printers to allow document printing when in the field .
Court Officer incremental change
Court Officer delegates raised the issue of the increment level they were placed into when the change was made from General Scale Clerks to Clerk Grade 1 and 2. Delegates raised the issue that prior experience may not have been recognised when the change to Clerk Grade 1 and 2 was implemented. This will be an ongoing review to establish and consider whether there is a case to recognise previous experience and consider exceptions to how the transition was applied.
Contacts