He said: “It’s important that the force is able to demonstrate good works and what it’s doing. However, the danger is that there’s a risk of returning to a target culture, and Kent was one of the first forces to do away with that.

“So there’s no problem around gathering data to see how the force is performing, but we don’t want to see a return to officers, particularly Sergeants and Constables, having to fill in tick box forms again – how many arrests they’ve had, how many stops and searches they’ve done – because then that starts to skew the activity at the front end.

“I know our Chief Constable is dead-set against any return to the type of culture that we used to have in Kent, and that he will push quite hard against the Home Office to prevent that happening.”

Neil added that targets added to officers’ stress, at a time when they were already struggling with high workloads.

He said: “This isn’t 20,000 cops that are starting on Monday. It’s going to take time to train them. It’s going to take time to embed them. The benefit of spreading the work around and reducing officer workloads is critical.

“At a time when officers have high workloads, the last thing we as a Federation want to see is them also having to go around ticking boxes, because that’s going to be a perfect storm. It’ll start to affect their wellbeing and their health.”