Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of community response police in Hounslow in each of the last five years.

The Home Office does not hold centrally the information requested.

The Home Office collects and publishes data annually on the number of police officers and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), including the primary role that these officers perform, by police force area. Data are not available at the borough level.

The latest data available on the number of police officers and PCSOs in the Metropolitan Police Service, and their primary role, as at 31 March 2017 can be found in the Tables F1 and F3 of the police workforce statistics published in July 2017: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/629865/police-workforce-tabs-jul17.ods

Data as at 31 March 2015 and 31 March 2016 can be found in the Tables F4 (for police officers) and Tables F3 and F6 (for PCSOs) of the police workforce statistics published in July 2016: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/544954/police-workforce-tabs-jul16.ods

Previous data were collected under a different framework, with different definitions, and are therefore not directly comparable with data as at 31 March 2015 or 2016. Data have been published since 2012, and can be found in the supplementary data tables of the relevant police workforce publications via the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales

Officers and PCSOs with multiple responsibilities or designations are recorded under their primary function. The data do not therefore provide a complete picture of all officers assigned to neighbourhood policing functions.

Some forces are not able to make a clear distinction between ‘Neighbourhood Policing’ roles and ‘Incident (Response) Management’ roles, therefore those forces record the majority of, or all, employees under just one function. A more reliable measure is the number of officers employed in ‘Local policing’ roles, which includes both neighbourhood and response functions.

Any comparisons at force level should be made with care due to collaboration arrangements between forces for particular functions. Additionally, police functions data are often affected by re-structuring within police forces. Therefore comparisons over time for specific functions should be made with care.

Decisions on the size and composition of the police workforce are operational matters for Chief Officers working with their Police and Crime Commissioners and taking into account local priorities.