Plain clothes allowances
56.—(1) A member of a police force below the rank of assistant chief constable who is required for a continuous period of not less than a week to do duty in plain clothes shall be paid a plain clothes allowance at such annual rate as shall be determined by the Secretary of State.
(2) A member of a police force below the rank of superintendent who is required to perform duties in plain clothes for not less than 40 hours in the aggregate in any period of 6 months shall, subject to paragraph (3), be paid a plain clothes allowance in respect of such duties at such hourly rate as shall be determined by the Secretary of State.
(3) For the purposes of paragraph (2) and the calculation of the aggregate duration of the duties there referred to—
(a)where the duties were performed on an occasion falling within such a continuous period of plain clothes duty as is mentioned in paragraph (1), no account shall be taken of those duties;
(b)where the duties performed on any occasion lasted less than 4 complete hours, no account shall be taken of those duties;
(c)where the duties performed on any occasion lasted for a completed number of hours and a fraction of an hour, no account shall be taken of that fraction.
(4) Notwithstanding anything in paragraph (1) or (2), where a member of a police force is provided with overalls when doing duty in plain clothes or for any other reason is, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, put to substantially less or substantially more than the normal expense caused by wearing his own clothes, a plain clothes allowance payable to him under paragraph (1) or (2) shall be payable not at the rate determined under the paragraph in question but at such rate as may be approved by the Secretary of State having regard to the circumstances of the case.