Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many designated road traffic officers there have been in each police force in each year since 2010.

The Home Office collects and publishes data annually on the primary function of police officers, as part of the ‘Police workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletins. These data include officers whose primary function is “Road Policing”. Officers with multiple responsibilities are recorded under their primary function.

The data requested on traffic officers are provided in the table attached. Data for years prior to 2015 were collected under a different framework, with different definitions, and are therefore not directly comparable with data as at 31 March 2015 or 2016.

Some forces are unable to make a clear distinction between certain functions and therefore record the majority of, or all, employees under one function. In particular, some forces have employees who work within units whose function is to provide both roads policing and armed policing. Reclassification of roles within a force can lead to fluctuations in the number of officers in a particular role between years.