Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many police officers per capita there were in (a) Mid Bedfordshire constituency and (b) England in each of the last eight years.

The Home Office collects and publishes data on the size of the police workforce in England and Wales on a bi-annual basis in the ‘Police Workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales.

These data are collected at Police Force Area (PFA) level only, and information at lower levels of geography, such as Parliamentary Constituencies is not collected.

Table H4 of the data tables accompanying each publication, shows the number of full-time equivalent police officers as at 31 March per 100,000 resident population both nationally and at a PFA level.

The latest data, as at 31 March 2023, shows there are 247 police officers per 100,000 resident population in England, and 205 in Bedfordshire.