Police: Recruitment
(asked on 21st June 2022) - View Source
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress she has made on recruiting new police officers; and what the breakdown of operational officer numbers was for each of the past seven years in (a) the UK and (b) North Wales.
As part of the Police Officer Uplift Programme, the Home Office publishes a quarterly update on the number of officers (in headcount terms) in England and Wales, broken down by Police Force Area (PFA). Data are available here: Police Officer uplift statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The Home Office collects and publishes information on officers in England and Wales only.
The latest statistics show that as at March 2022 police forces in England and Wales have recruited 13,576 additional officers as part of the Police Uplift Programme. In North Wales 164 additional officers have been recruited.
While the ‘Police officer uplift’ statistical bulletin provides a timely update on overall officer numbers, the Home Office also collects and publishes data on the size and composition of the police workforce in England and Wales on a biannual basis in the ‘Police workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin. These biannual statistics remain the key measure of the size of the police workforce and provide information on both a headcount and a full-time equivalent (FTE) basis.
Information on the total number of officers in England and Wales in each financial year since 2003 can be found in table H3 of the data tables which accompany the latest publication:
Information on the number and proportion of officers performing frontline roles (both visible operational frontline and non-visible frontline) by financial year is published in table F5.
Both these tables are presented in full-time equivalent terms and should therefore not be directly compared with the ‘Police officer uplift’ statistics, which are published in headcount terms.