Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many traffic police officers were employed in each police force area in each of the last five years.

The number of full time equivalent police officers employed in traffic policing roles as at 31 March in each of the last 5 years is provided in the tables. Officers with multiple responsibilities are recorded under their primary function or role. Data for 31 March 2015 (the latest period for which figures are available) can also be found in the supplementary tables of the July 2015 police workforce statistics publication:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/444537/police-workforce-supptabs-mar15.ods

Reclassification of roles within a force can lead to fluctuations in the number of officers in a particular role.

As HMIC has made clear, there is no simple link between police numbers and crime levels, between numbers and the visibility of police in the community, or between numbers and the quality of service provided.

Decisions on the size and composition of the police workforce are operational matters for Chief Officers working with their Police and Crime Commissioners and taking into account local priorities. What matters is how officers are deployed, not how many of them there are.