Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Lord Sharpe of Epsom on 9 January (HL Deb col 1218), how many police forces (1) do, and (2) do not, routinely require applicants to attend a post assessment face-to-face interview before proceeding to appointment as a police officer.

Decisions about police recruitment, including how recruitment and selection processes are run, are a matter for Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners and are therefore managed locally by forces. This is done within a national application, assessment and selection framework, in line with national guidance maintained by the College of Policing.

All 43 forces across England and Wales use the College of Policing Online Assessment Process (OAP) which was launched in May 2020. This improved process includes an interview, which is assessed by a fully trained assessor and ensures quality assurance is in place. This is vastly different to level of quality assurance which existed before the Police Uplift Programme, when forces undertook face-to-face interviews with no national standards for assessors.

Post OAP interviews were introduced as a non-mandatory step by the College of Policing in 2022. These interviews were introduced to standardise various local processes that forces were using following applicants passing the OAP.

The latest available data provided by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and College of Policing indicates that 23 forces use this standard College process. In addition, 10 forces continue to use a local face-to face interview post OAP. A further 10 do not hold a post OAP interview, however these forces engage with all candidates face-to-face as part of the recruitment process, for example through familiarisation events or during other stages in the recruitment process.