Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many dedicated officers there are in each police force that specialise in fraud.

The Home Office does not hold the specific information requested.

The Home Office collects data annually on the primary function of police officers. Under the functions framework there is no dedicated function for fraud. However, there is a dedicated function for officers working primarily on ‘Economic crime’, which includes officers working in financial investigation units, cheque and credit card fraud units, regional asset recovery teams, and other financial investigations.

Officers with multiple responsibilities or designations are recorded under their primary function. The data do not therefore provide a complete picture of all officers who work on economic crime.

Data on the number of officers working primarily on economic crime can be found in Table F4, under function 7c, 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

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 may not be meaningful.