Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the ratio is of members of the public to the number of police officers in England and Wales as at 12 November 2021.

The Home Office collects and publishes data on the number of police officers in post as well as the number recruited as part of the Police Officer Uplift Programme on a quarterly basis. The latest data, covering the situation to 30 September 2021, are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-officer-uplift-statistics.

These data show that there were 139,908 officers in the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales as at 30 September 2021.

Using the latest mid-year population estimates published by the Office for National Statistics (for mid-2020), there were 234 police officers for every 100,000 population. The latest mid-year population estimates are published at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2020