Numbers up, but officer retention is an issue, says Federation chair

19 April 2023

Police officer numbers will reach the highest levels in history when new figures are announced next week, according to policing minister Chris Philp.

Mr Philp told GMB yesterday that he was confident that records would be broken when the latest data is published on 26 April.

He said: “There is going to be an announcement next week and I am confident it will show that we will have record numbers of police - more police than we have ever had at any point in the history of England and Wales.

“The previous high point was in March 2010 when there were about 145,000 police officers in England and Wales and I am expectantly confident that when the figures are published next week we will have comfortably exceeded that previous high point.”

The announcement is expected to confirm the number of police officers in Suffolk is now higher than it was in 2010.

Suffolk Police Federation chair Darren Harris welcomed the increase but warned officer retention remained an issue across policing, and said that the demands of the Policing Education Qualifications Framework (PEQF) meant officers, the Force and the communities it serves were not really feeling the benefits of the uplift.

Darren said: “We were supportive of the Police Uplift Programme and the recruitment drive which appears to have been a success as far as numbers are concerned.

“But keeping hold of young officers is still a challenge with pay and conditions a huge factor when it comes to attrition rates and officers leaving the service. The Government must make a commitment over pay and conditions or the retention crisis will just get worse and worse.

“It is also incredibly frustrating that due to the PEQF programme, we are seeing a constant drain on teams due to the abstractions necessary for probationer training. As fast as our new recruits join a team or department, they are taken away again. While we appreciate the need for officers to be fully trained, the entry routes the Constabulary has been forced to use are causing huge abstraction issues and this needs to be addressed to ensure that our members and the people of Suffolk feel the benefits of our increased numbers.”

Mr Philp refused to speculate on the precise figure expected to be unveiled next week but insisted the number of officers in England and Wales would be “some margin higher, some thousands higher”. 

The minister blamed previous administrations when confronted with evidence that police numbers went down by more than 20,000 between 2010 and 2017 when, according to the Home Office, there were just 121,929 officers.

Mr Philp said: “The reason police officer numbers fell in the years immediately after 2010 - and there were spending constraints in other public services as well - is because the outgoing Labour government left the country essentially bankrupt and George Osborne had to take difficult decisions to put it back in order.

“Since we have managed to get the economy into better shape, we have been able to fund additional police officers to make up for not just those who were unfortunately reduced, but we are going to go beyond that and have more officers than we had in 2010.”