Police: Employment

(asked on 10th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many police constables there were in each police force area in England and Wales in 2020.


Answered by
Baroness Williams of Trafford Portrait
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (HM Household) (Chief Whip, House of Lords)
This question was answered on 24th June 2021

The Home Office collects and publishes data on the size and composition of the police workforce in England and Wales on a biannual basis in the ‘Police workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin, available here: Police workforce England and Wales statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

The latest officer numbers were released in the publication covering the situation as at 30 September 2020. Data covering the situation as at 31 March 2020 and previous years are available in open data format here: Police workforce open data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Total officer numbers are collected and published twice each year covering the situation as at 31 March and 30 September. Data covering officer rank, however, is collected only once and covers the situation as at 31 March.

The number of police constables (full time-equivalent, FTE) in the 43 territorial England and Wales forces as at 31 March 2020 is provided in the table below:

Constables, England and Wales
As at 31 March 2020

Force

Constables

Avon & Somerset

2,197

Bedfordshire

998

Cambridgeshire

1,249

Cheshire

1,622

Cleveland

1,053

Cumbria

939

Derbyshire

1,472

Devon & Cornwall

2,328

Dorset

917

Durham

876

Dyfed-Powys

843

Essex

2,647

Gloucestershire

896

Greater Manchester

5,329

Gwent

1,031

Hampshire

2,058

Hertfordshire

1,628

Humberside

1,549

Kent

2,985

Lancashire

2,320

Leicestershire

1,521

Lincolnshire

774

London, City of

547

Merseyside

2,851

Metropolitan Police

26,077

Norfolk

1,275

North Wales

1,143

North Yorkshire

1,117

Northamptonshire

962

Northumbria

2,481

Nottinghamshire

1,635

South Wales

2,262

South Yorkshire

1,898

Staffordshire

1,291

Suffolk

956

Surrey

1,441

Sussex

2,150

Thames Valley

3,337

Warwickshire

801

West Mercia

1,717

West Midlands

5,120

West Yorkshire

4,363

Wiltshire

758

Total

101,415

While the ‘Police workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin remains the key measure of the size of the police workforce, as part of the Police Officer Uplift Programme, the Home Office also publishes a quarterly update on the number of officers (headcount) in England and Wales. Data are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-officer-uplift-statistics

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