Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to encourage more people to join the police force in West Yorkshire.

The Government is committed to increasing the number of police officers by 20,000 by March 2023. Today we announced that as at 31 December 2020, 6,620 additional officers had been recruited in England and Wales showing that we are on track to deliver this commitment.

We have made £700m additional funding available for PCCs in 2020-21, and in the next financial year, 2021-22, we are giving PCCs an additional £415m to support the recruitment of a further 6,000 additional police officers by March 2022.

West Yorkshire Police has been allocated 256 additional officers in the first year of the Police Uplift Programme, supported by £484.5M for the force. At 31 December 2020 the force has recruited an additional 390 uplift officers against its baseline and has therefore already exceeded its year one allocation. For year two of the uplift, the force has been allocated 239 additional officers and additional funding of £511.9M – an increase of £27.3M on last year.

The national uplift programme is also supporting all forces with a variety of attraction and recruitment strategies, whilst delivering a campaign that’s been designed to reach diverse audiences.