#MeetTheRep - Olly Brown

6 May 2025

Tell us about your career in policing.

I started off at Surrey Police in May 2003, beginning with four years of response before 16-ish years on roads policing, based out of Caterham and Godstone. Then, in June 2023, I joined the exercise and testing unit in operations command, which is the development team down in Lewes. It’s a collaborate role, covering both Surrey and Sussex forces. My scope is the specialist units – firearms, dogs, search, roads, disaster victim identification and public order, but also commanders. So really the current role is supporting multi-agencies in designing and delivering exercises to increase our forward preparedness.

It sounds like the perfect range of experience a Fed Rep might need...

I’ve been in the job beyond 20 years now, I’ve got lots of knowledge I want to impart. One of the main areas of interest for me is to try and support second-line leaders in managerial processes and how they can support and develop staff. This would help reduce the amount of times they need to be dealt with by UPP, because we’ve addressed the challenges or issues in the first place. I think I can help them with that and it’s what motivated me to join.

What other areas are you keen to focus on?

My focus is mostly going to be on performance and misconduct. I’m afraid I have an arguably sad interest in health and safety. It’s not a subject that’s particularly attractive to many, but our employer has a duty to look after us. Our job is inherently dangerous so wherever we can we should be health and safety conscious. I’m trying to make it more of an attractive, exciting topic.

Why is it important to have officers as Fed Reps?

A lot of policing is the strains and the pressures of the relentlessness of it. It’s being told your rest days are cancelled again and again, the sensation that you can’t book annual leave. Officers can understand that. They are either doing it and have developed strategies to be able to address, or they know the rules and regulations that will cover them to say no. Even when you’re trying to make it work, you know what you can and can’t do. I think that’s why it’s important - it should be officers supporting officers.

Tell us a quirky fact about yourself?

An interesting fact about me is that last year I joined an ensemble called Jumbo Ensemble, which is led by my second-line manager in Sussex. We perform an amateur/professional West End-style show to raise money for a charity called the Chailey Heritage Foundation. It helps to educate and support seriously disabled children. I’m part of the choir there and it’s been very wholesome and pleasant. We love a bit of Abba, although my favourite is the Les Misérables hit ‘Do you hear the people sing?’. That’s because I can put on an extremely, excessively low voice and blast it out - and we sound pretty good in that one.