‘Alarming’ numbers of recruits leaving police before completing their probation

17 March 2022

An alarming 15.6 per cent of new officers who were recruited into Suffolk Police since the end of 2019 have quit before completing their probation.

That is according to data from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, obtained by Police Oracle, which showed that 50 of those 320 new officers have already walked away from the job, which is above the 9.1 per cent average for England and Wales.

Darren Harris, chair of Suffolk Police Federation, is calling for a greater focus on retention, backed up with action around pay and working conditions.

He said: “We all desperately want to see the Government’s Police Uplift Programme succeed and to get back to the staffing levels we had before the austerity years. We simply cannot expect to deliver the service the public deserves without boots on the ground.

“That’s why it is so frustrating and tragic that we’re getting bright, young talent through the door and allowing them to become so broken and disillusioned that they are turning their backs on policing before they even get started.

“These figures should shame police leaders and the Government and shows it is not enough to recruit people, they have to focus on retention and that includes decent pay, welfare and working conditions.”

The starting salary for many officers in their first year of a Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship is £19,164 which is barely above the national living wage.

But tax, National Insurance contributions and pension contributions mean that even if an officer’s gross salary is around £24,000 their take home pay can be as little as £1,500 a month.

‘The reality is that some new recruits simply can’t afford to live on their wages. Add in the rising costs of energy and fuel and you can see that we are going to have many new officers really struggling. We are asking these people to give so much and yet we cannot even guarantee fair pay,” says Darren.

One in 10 police officers who responded to the 2021 Police Federation of England and Wales’ Pay and Morale survey said they are not or almost never able to cover their monthly essentials.

The average attrition rate for new police recruits is 9.1 per cent – or 2,567 leavers from 28,173 new recruits. This calculation is based on numbers who joined after November 2021 and who began leaving from April 2020.

Suffolk is at the top end of the figures, just behind Northamptonshire on 19.3 per cent attrition, North Yorkshire on 16.8 per cent and Cambridgeshire at 16.1 per cent. The Met Police has lost 528 officers before completing probation – which is 7.9 per cent of their total recruits.

Data showed 11,048 officers have been recruited from funding for the Police Uplift Programme and contributed towards the target of 20,000 by March 2023.

If the 20,000 target is achieved, it would bring officer numbers up to around 148,000, which is slightly above the number of officers in 2010.