Metropolitan Police: Police Patrolling

(asked on 23rd May 2018) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many hours police officers spent on patrol in (a) the London Borough of Southwark and (b) the Metropolitan Police Service in each of the last seven years.


Answered by
Nick Hurd Portrait
Nick Hurd
This question was answered on 4th June 2018

The Home Office does not centrally hold the information requested.

The Home Office collects and publishes information on the primary roles that police officers perform, as well as the number of frontline officers, for Police Force Areas in England and Wales. Data are collected on a full-time equivalent (FTE) basis, with no information available for the number of hours spent performing each role. These data are published annually as part of the 'police workforce, England and Wales' statistical bulletin, the latest of which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2017

Data on the primary roles officers perform, and the number of officers on the frontline, are only collected at Police Force Area level and cannot be broken down any further. Furthermore, the number of officers specifically on foot patrol cannot be separately identified. The latest available data on frontline officers, broken down by Police Force Area and going back to 2010, can be found in Table_F5 of the data tables accompanying the main release.

Data for the years 2010 to 2014 are estimated since data prior to 31 March 2015 were collected under a different framework, with different definitions.

Decisions on the size and deployment of the police workforce are operational matters for Chief Officers working with their Police and Crime Commissioners and taking into account local priorities.

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