No wonder she’s smiling! Cressida Dick in line for a £575,000 payout

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Dame Cressida Dick put on a brave face and grinned as she arrived at Scotland Yard in civilian clothes today – just hours after resigning as Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

MailOnline can reveal that Dame Cressida, 61, still has plenty to smile about as she will walk away from her post with up to three pensions estimated to pay out £160,000-a-year – plus a pay-off in the region of £575,000.

She can also look forward to possibly earning a small fortune from lucrative consultancy work, or even taking on a new high-profile public role.

There is also a chance that she may join her predecessor Bernard Hogan-Howe in the House of Lords where she could qualify for a daily £323 attendance allowance.

Hogan-Howe left the Met in 2016 with a £9million gold-plated pension giving him an annual taxpayer-funded income of £181,500 a year. 

Alternatively, she may now choose to put her feet up at her £1million village home which she shares with her partner Helen, who is a retired Metropolitan Police inspector.

Wrapped up warm against the early morning chill, Dame Cressida dressed casually in wax jacket, gloves and jeans as she walked to her office today.

She is expected to spend a few weeks clearing her desk while a search gets underway to find her replacements as Britain’s top police officer.

Dame Cressida sensationally quit last night after a bust-up with London mayor Sadiq Khan following a series of scandals about the alleged misogynistic and racist conduct of some of her officers.

She will receive a bumper pension payout as it is effectively the second time that she has ‘retired’ from the Met after clocking nearly 37 years service.

Dame Cressida qualified for her first pension – a gold-plated scheme called PPS87 – as it was the national police retirement scheme when she joined the force in 1983.

It was replaced in 2006 by a new pension called PPS06, before police pension plans were revamped again in 2015, under a scheme called PPS15.

Dame Cressida would have qualified for one third of her final leaving salary after 30 years’ service, under the PPS87 scheme, according to Home Office documents.

She first retired from the Met in 2015 when she stood down as the force’s first woman Assistant Commissioner, and took on a role in the Foreign Office.

Her final salary in her Assistant role was £201,196 including London weighting, meaning she would have qualified for at least £70,000-a-year under the scheme, due to her 32 years service.

But she would also have potentially earned additional increments under the PPS06 pension scheme, giving her a massive boost in her annual payments.

Dame Cressida returned to Scotland Yard as Police Commissioner in 2017, replacing Bernard Hogan-Howe, when she would have qualified for a salary of £270,648 plus benefits.

But it was disclosed at the time that she had instead chosen to accept a reduced salary of £230,000-a-year.

It is believed that she wanted to demonstrate that she was not being greedy as she already had a police pension, although no reason for her pay cut was given at the time.

Her gesture was seen as a welcome move, demonstrating how she wanted to set an example of restraint, when the Met were facing major budget cuts.

The Met were reported to have made £600million of savings in the seven years before her appointment and needed to save a further £400million at the time.

Now she has retired for a second time, Dame Cressida will potentially qualify for yet another retirement boost under the PPS15 scheme, assuming she has paid into it.

But there is also a possibility that she may get a FOURTH pension if she paid into a Government scheme during her time at the Foreign Office.

Metropolitan Police Federation chairman Ken Marsh predicted that Dame Cressida would receive a total pension of around £160,000-a-year.

He told MailOnline: ‘I can’t say for sure what she will do now but she’ll be in a financially strong position – which she was in even before re-joining the police.

‘She hasn’t received a pension while in the role but when she has left she will receive an annual pension that amounts to two thirds of her final salary so it’ll be around £160,000.

‘I don’t know what deals have been done, but there’s a very high chance of her following some of her predecessors into the House of Lords.

‘She has just been made a Dame. I wouldn’t carry on in the police after the way she has been treated.’

Dame Cressida made her shock resignation last night, just hours after pledging to stay on to clean up the force.

Mr Marsh said her decision to quit represented an abrupt U-turn as she had initially decided to remain at the helm following a meeting with him on Wednesday.

He revealed that she was staying on after she asked him if she ‘still had the locker room’ and he told her that she still had the total support of rank and file officers.

Mr Marsh was shocked to see her reverse her decision after a meeting with the London mayor who had earlier publicly warned her to clean up the force ‘in a matter of days or weeks’ or face losing her job.

He questioned who would replace her, saying: ‘A couple of weeks ago there was nobody suitable to take over which is why she signed a two-year extension – so how is there someone suitable now?

‘There will be a replacement, someone is always going to take a £230,000 a year job, but whether they’re suitable is a completely different thing.

‘One individual has caused all this to happen for political gain, it’s very sad I think. The rank and file are not happy at all.

‘I haven’t met a Met cop out of 32,000 who has been saying to me, ‘She should go, she shouldn’t be there’. That is quite unprecedented.

‘I was in her office on Wednesday afternoon and she asked me if she still had the locker room – that was the barometer about whether she stayed or went – and I told her that she still had it totally.

‘That was all she was concerned about because all this rubbish about bringing someone in to crack heads – good luck with that l. If you haven’t got your cops on board, I can tell you how long that’ll work for.

‘I can’t see how this will unfold for the good of the people of London to be honest. It’s a massively challenging time to be a police officer in this city at the moment.

‘People talk of morale among the public being rock bottom- have a look at my cops. The mood is horrendous.

‘My officers believe Cressida has been treated appallingly as the fall girl for this Government to deflect from their own troubles.’

Lord Hogan-Howe who served as Commissioner from 2011 in 2017 was knighted in 2013 for services to policing.

His period in command was blighted by him having presided over Scotland Yard’s VIP paedophile probe which ruined the reputations of several public figures including retired Armed Forces chief and D-Day hero Field Marshal Lord Bramall, ex-Home Secretary Leon Brittan and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor.

The three men who were all completely innocent faced a police probe after the Met swallowed the lies of a fantasist who pretended to have been abused as a boy.

Lord Hogan-Howe, 64, was made a life peer soon after leaving the force, giving him a place in the House of Lords.

Last week it was reported that he had applied for a £223,000 job as director general of the National Crime Agency which is regarded as Britain’s equivalent of the FBI

His predecessor Paul Stephenson who was Commissioner from 2009 to 2011 was not given a life peerage.

But in retirement he has served as a non-executive director and advisor within the private sector.

He is currently a non-executive Regulatory Director on the British Horse-racing Authority and sits on the Advisory Board for Stratium Global Pty Ltd (Australia).

Sir Paul has also served as a trustee for charities including Crimestoppers UK as well as Embrace Child Victims of Crime.