Three special constables have been named in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

West Midlands Special Chief Officer Mike Rogers has been awarded an MBE for services to policing and the community.

One of the country’s only marine special constables, Russ Hall of Devon and Cornwall Police, is awarded the British Empire Medal, and Special Chief Officer Ben Clifford of British Transport Police gets the same honour.

S/CO Rogers has volunteered for West Midlands Police’s special constabulary for 47 years – since joining as a student at university.

The lawyer gives 80 hours a month for the force on top of his day job where he specialises in areas such as clinical negligence.

S/CO Rogers, who has led the force's specials since 2014, told Police Oracle: “Life’s been fairly generous to me and I wanted to give something back to the community.

“I couldn’t have done any of this without my wife and my family, they’ve always supported me.”

Elsewhere SC Russ Hall - a special constable who supplies his own boat for marine policing – gets the British Empire Medal.

SC Russ Hall retired as a regular sergeant in 2013, having served for 27 years including as a neighbourhood policing team lead in Looe, while he volunteered for marine duties on the side. Before joining the police he served for more than six years in the Royal Navy.

He maintains his boat, which he commercially skippers as his day job, to the required standards for policing.

He told Police Oracle: “I’m quite surprised at the BEM. There are people who do much more than I do and I feel like I’ve got it because of them.

“When I came to retire I thought it was a little bit rich walking away with my pension when all these other people I worked with [outside of policing] had done it for nothing.”

BTP Special Chief Officer Ben Clifford has volunteered more than 700 hours to policing in the last year.

He works full time as an academic geographer lecturing in City Planning at University College London. S/CO Clifford regularly visits the force’s teams across Britain.

He said: “The last couple of years have been particularly rewarding for me, seeing a growth so that BTP’s specials have been volunteering over 100,000 hours to policing per year.”