The government has met its recruitment goal of 20,000 additional police officers in England and Wales.
Since 2019, it has hired 20,951 more officers, bringing the total to 149,572.
This means that the number of officers has increased by approximately 3,500 since 2010 when the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats began reducing police personnel.
The increase was included in the 2019 Conservative election platform.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman stated, “We have delivered on the promise we made to the British people, which means more police on the beat preventing violence, solving burglaries, and cracking down on antisocial behavior.”
However, there are concerns that the increase has not maintained pace with population growth since 2010 and that many experienced officers have left the force.
Is this an unprecedented amount of police officers?
The new headcount of 149,572 officers in England and Wales (including part-time employees) surpasses the previous record of 146,012 set in 2010.
It was attained after a significant increase in the first three months of 2023 – 4,000 additional officers – the largest quarterly increase since the government began its recruitment program.
It is essential to remember that the number of police officers decreased by approximately 20,000 between 2010 and 2019 due to a 20% reduction in government funding.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, tweeted, “The Tories are trying to fool the country on policing… they have CUT 20,000 police officers.”
Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Alistair Carmichael stated, “Suella Braverman’s boasts will ring hollow for communities that have seen community policing decimated under this government.”
Have police personnel increased at the same rate as the population?
Despite a few thousand more police officers, the population has grown by 7% since 2010.
If the number of officers in England and Wales had increased proportionally with the population since 2010, thousands more officers would be required.
Ms. Braverman told, “we set that [20,000] target taking population growth into account.” We asked the Home Office how they accomplished this feat.
How many officers are departing the force?
In the year leading up to March 2022, an all-time high of 8,117 full-time police officers left the force.
Police officers can claim their pensions in their fifties, constituting half of those departing the force.
However, a growing proportion of employees resigned – approximately 40% in 2021-22, compared to a third the previous year.
Last year, the Public Accounts Committee, which examines government initiatives, found in a report that roughly 9% of newly recruited officers quit during their two-year probation periods.
The police uplift programme brought almost 900 extra officers to Essex Police, according to Chief Constable Ben-Julian Harrington. However, he is concerned that some employees will quit due to low wages and rising costs of living.
“You cannot stop your petrol bill,” he explained. To retain new officers, he stated that he would advocate for their training and support.
Are law enforcement officers less seasoned?
There are now fewer full-time senior police officers than there were in 2010.
At 6,245, the number of examiners has decreased by 14%. Additionally, the number of superintendents and sergeants has decreased.
One-third of police officers in England and Wales have fewer than five years of experience, according to records. This number is more than twice what it was six years ago.
The Public Accounts Committee has linked declining levels of experience to the government’s recruitment efforts for new officers.
The committee’s chair, Dame Meg Hillier, stated, “The danger is that if you fluctuate police numbers and then rapidly recruit, you will end up with a larger number of junior officers without the experienced officers above them.”
This could affect the efficiency of the police force.
The police overseer, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, placed the Metropolitan Police under special measures in June 2022.
HM Inspector Matt Parr wrote in a letter to the force that systemic failures had been “amplified by the presence of a relatively young, inexperienced workforce – a result of the [Met’s] increased recruitment enabled by the police uplift program.”
They describe being left to manage increasing caseloads on their own.
One of them, who did not want to be identified, said he was assigned 12 files on his first day in CID. He stated, “From that point on, I was swimming upstream.”
One individual stated that his time as a detective was “the worst year of my life.”
He feared making a mistake that would hurt a case or a victim because his CID section was mostly trainees.
Both trainee detectives have now departed the Met, as have approximately ten of their thirty peers.
The Met Police was the only agency that did not meet its additional officer quota. It fell shy by 1,089 of its target of 4,557.
