CIVILIAN police workers have hit out at the “shoddy” way they were told their redundancy payments are to be slashed by half.

Instead of having the bad news broken in a letter, e-mail or a formal meeting with bosses at Essex Police, the force told its thousands of workers by posting an article on its internal website.

But the “insensitive” move has provoked outrage from the force’s support staff.

Speaking anonymously about the gaffe, a civilian worker said: “This affects 25 per cent of police staff.

“But they decided to tell us by putting the news on the intranet; they weren’t as polite as sending a letter or an eemail, that would have been too much to ask.

“So if you’re a member of police support staff and you didn’t read the intranet you wouldn’t have known.”

Following the Government’s spending review announcement last month, Essex Police will have to make savings of £50million by 2014.

All of the county’s 2,500 support staff, including people working in finance, personnel, administration, press and public relations and on front desks in police stations, have already been told Essex Police is consulting with public sector union Unison about the job cuts it will have to make.

About 600 civilian staff are expected to be axed as part of the cull.

The new redundancy policy, decided by the Essex Police Authority, will take effect from December 10.

Redundancy payments, which are normally paid according to a worker’s age and years of service, will now be cut by 50 per cent.

The Essex Police branch of Unison is now taking legal advice.

A spokesman for the union said: “Some members of the police authority have, by this action, indicated they appear to have little concern for police staff and that this is the start of a course of action which has the potential to get significantly worse.”

Unison claims Essex Police will have £22.9million in reserves by April 2011.

It claims the force only needs £8million to cope with any emergency situations, leaving a spare £14.9million which could be used to keep support staff and police officers in employment.