Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that police forces are able to maintain existing levels of frontline policing over the next five years.

Ultimately, decisions on the size and composition of a police force’s workforce are for individual chief officers and Police and Crime Commissioners. The police have demonstrated that, with reform, it is possible to deliver more for less and to prioritise available resource at the frontline.