Police numbers: ‘sustained investment is needed’

28 January 2025

Force police officer numbers are still down on where they were at the start of the austerity measures in 2010, despite a small increase in the headcount in the last 12 months.

The Government has published the police workforce statistics for the 12 months up until the end of September 2024 for all forces across England and Wales with the majority showing either a small drop in numbers or remaining the same when compared to the previous year’s numbers.

In the West Midlands, there were 7,995 full-time equivalent officers in September 2024, compared with 7,874 in September 2023, a 1.5 per cent increase. But in the six months between the end of March and the end of September last year, the numbers fell from 8,000, a drop of 0.1 per cent.

At the end of September 2010, West Midlands Police had 8,400 officers.

Tim Rogers, secretary of West Midlands Police Federation.

“The Police Uplift Programme which was launched by the previous Conservative Government saw 20,000 police officers recruited nationwide in the three years up until the end of March 2023,” says Tim Rogers, secretary of West Midlands Police Federation.

“Of course, forces welcomed the influx of new recruits to boost officer numbers which had fallen so low that many forces were struggling to provide effective policing services for the communities they serve.

“But, sadly, that recruitment drive only just took us back to the officer numbers nationwide that we had in 2010 when austerity measures were introduced and force budgets were slashed. In the intervening years, we saw the very nature of policing change with the demands placed on the service increasing beyond all belief.

“Not only were police forces dealing with ‘traditional’ crimes, burglaries, theft, assaults, but they were also learning to adapt to new, emerging and growing crimes, such as human trafficking and cyber-crime with reduced resources but they were also picking up the pieces for other services and organisations that were struggling to cope due to their own budget cuts.

Burglaries

‘The police service became the service of first and last resort, the service that could never say no. Police officers were put under huge pressure, they suffered mentally as they tried to do more with less but they also suffered physically due to a rising number of officer assaults with their assailants rarely receiving appropriate sentences.

“In the context of the changing nature of crime, the increased and changing demand, the complexity of investigations and the inexperience of the new influx of numbers, you cannot really assert that numbers have risen appropriately or that numbers are sufficient. We are in a transitional phase with a learning group of officers in their thousands who will need time and investment to flourish. We are already seeing the usual tensions with disproportionate under performance from student officers and an inability to provide the support they need.

“In addition, now we are seeing that, while the uplift programme brought in more officers, recruitment has trailed off and that means forces are not maintaining their numbers. There is an officer retention crisis that is impacting on numbers and we now need to see sustained investment in recruitment. It should not just be about keeping officer numbers at the current level but also making sure we recruit more to get us back to 2010 levels.”

Police workforce statistics – 30 September 2024.