Home Office figures show officer numbers across Wales have now reached 8,092 compared with 6,628 in March 2019 and the previous high of 7,245 officers in March 2010.

South Wales Police took on 527 officers under the Police Uplift Programme, Gwent recruited 239, North Wales 207 and Dyfed Powys 154.

But Nicky said the data was misleading and warned the rise in officer number would not necessarily lead to more bobbies on the beat.

She told BBC Radio Wales: “These figures are just a smoke and mirrors. They are not additional new officers, it is basically the backfilling of officers who were cut from policing since 2010.

“Austerity hit in 2010 and policing was one of the biggest sectors to take the cuts - about 23,000 officers across England and Wales were cut - but the work didn’t disappear, it was still there, so the officers that remained have basically filled those gaps for 13 years.

“These newly recruited officers are very much welcome and we hope they have a long and very exciting policing career.

“But the damage that has been done in that time is not insignificant. Police stations have closed, links with our communities have been lost and back office staff and all the support around policing were also cut. 

“We are very lucky in Wales in that the Welsh Government does fund community support officers but we now have a very inexperienced workforce and the Government’s own attrition modelling show that 20 per cent of the national workforce will still be in their first two years of service by the end of 2024/25.”

The Home Office figures show that a total of 20,951 extra recruits have joined the service across England and Wales under the Police Uplift Programme and the only Force that failed to meet its target was the Met.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Twitter: “In 2019 we promised to recruit 20,000 additional police officers in England and Wales to make our streets safer and protect communities. Today, I’m pleased to say we have delivered that promise.”

Home Secretary Suella Braverman described it as a “historic moment for our country”.

She said: “We should be immensely proud of what we’ve achieved in the last few years.

“Many said we couldn’t do it but this is a police success, a Home Office success and a Conservative Government success.”

She denied that policing was the “failure of austerity” and insisted the new recruitment figures were a success.

Asked whether it was fair to say that cuts to the police service in previous years had created problems across policing, she replied: “No. Since 2010, we see that overall crime has fallen. “When you take out fraud and online crime, it’s almost 50 per cent lower than it was in 2010.”