Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of increasing the starting salary of police officers in order to attract more potential candidates to the profession.

The independent Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) makes recommendations to the Government on the appropriate level of pay and allowances for police officers.

The PRRB gathers and invites parties to submit evidence to inform its recommendations. This includes both written and oral evidence from the Government, police employers and police staff associations. The PRRB weighs the evidence, considers independent research, and formulates detailed recommendations.

On 19 July the Government announced that it had accepted in full the recommendations of the PRRB to award a consolidated increase of £1,900 to all police officer ranks and pay points with effect from 1 September 2022. The award is targeted at those on the lowest pay points to provide an uplift of up to 8.8%.

As at 30 September 2022, 15,343 additional uplift officers have been recruited in England and Wales through the Police Uplift Programme, 77% of the target of 20,000 additional officers by March 2023.

Nationally forces have received 244,166 applications since the start of the uplift and interest in policing careers remains strong.