Northamptonshire Police has bid farewell to its oldest employee - who retired last week at the grand age of 80.

Junior Hashim has been a stalwart of the Information Services Department service desk for nearly 20 years, being a first point of contact for colleagues needing support with IT or telecommunications. 

His introduction to the force came about when he attended a diversity event in his role as secretary of the West India Club in Northampton.

Having recently taken early retirement due to redundancy from his previous job as a computer services manager, he got his name added to the temps register and in September 1999, he took up an admin role in the then ICT department.

As Junior approached his 65th birthday in 2003, he was asked if he wanted to continue working. He did, and with the compulsory retirement age abolished in 2011, was keen to continue. 

He said: “The pace of change has been immense. When I joined the force, email accounts were standalone and access to the internet was via modem. There was no intranet, a very basic website, a fledgling network and documents were still sent mainly by fax. 

“Some people had mobile phones but we were a long way from the smart phones and mobile devices and systems that now give us instant communications and remote working.

“It’s been a great 19 years and I’ve worked with a fantastic team of people, a handful of whom have been in the department as long I have. I’ll be sad to go but I’ve got lots of plans and plenty to keep me busy. It’ll be great to spend more time with my family, especially my granddaughter and three great-grandchildren who are currently living with me.”

Junior plans to make full use of his retirement and despite saying he is just going to “chill”, he has plenty of activities on his to do list. 

He added: “As well as joining the local gym, I’ll be making use of my bus pass taking a few trips around the county and I’m looking forward to picking up my saxophone again. Learning to cook is also on the list and I daresay I’ll be doing a few school runs.

“I don’t want to leave the criminal justice system behind completely – I’ve always had an interest in the courts and I’d like to go and sit in on a few court cases – fraud and financial cases in particular.”

“And you never know I may come back as a volunteer.”

Junior was born in Jamaica and has lived in the UK since 1956, serving in the RAF Signals from 1958 to 1970.

On leaving the RAF he spent three years as a computer programmer before moving to Northamptonshire from London in 1975.

He married in 1961 in Singapore where he converted to Islam. Sadly, his wife passed away in 2010. He has a daughter and three sons, six grandchildren and three great grandchildren.