I haven't had any issues with banking apps in regards to esafe, i'm currently with santander and monzo.

However i do remember when they installed the app on my phone that they did state some banking apps have issues running with esafe installed.

Hopefully you will be able to find one that works, unfortunately given the response from your officer and their sergeant it's likely going to be a trial and error with the apps. As from my personal experience and information released to me through an FOI the officers know about the same as we do in terms of esafe and esafe staff wont give out information to help in most cases even when such questions are asked with an officer being a middle man. Which makes things more of a burden than is practically necessary in my opinion.

However in terms of applying for a variation the only cost would come from being represented but as other have said there should be legal aid available, especially in the case that your SHPO is relatively new. However if you're prepared to do the work yourself applying for variation whilst self representing is free which is the route i'm currently taking against such monitoring prohibition but for slightly different reasons.

Though good luck with things

Just be careful with assuming that a SHPO variation will be free. When I did mine last year the police told me at the last possible legal moment that they were going to ask the court to ask me to pay their legal costs if the application was not found in my favour.

Some police force apparently do this.

Whilst my application to discharge was refused the judge did agree to remove the monitoring software prohibition from the SHPO. As a result of this and in his words because I was partly successful he agreed I didn't have to pay the police legal costs.

Ah thanks for that info, i'll keep it in my for future reference.

So far no one has tried to tell me of any costs, though maybe this differs between forces or because they are attempting to hijack my variation to slip even more restrictive things into the order which gave me a laugh i really needed xD

They literally only told me about the costs on the Friday my hearing was on the following Tuesday. This was the last possible time they could legally file notice on me of their intention to reclaim costs.

I had a bit of a moan at them about this being unfair as this had been going on for about 6 months at this point and they could easily have mentioned their intention to ask for costs at the outset. Whilst legally they had done nothing wrong as a public body they could have been more open.

Ah i have my variation hearing on wednesday, so far i haven't heard of any reclaim of costs.

Though i feel you on that, if something's been going on for that long you'd expect them to submit a claim for costs in a more timely manner.