Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has been made of the level of police recruitment and retention rates; and what steps she is taking to help constabularies maintain the number of frontline police officers.

The Government is clear that visible policing is essential to restoring public confidence in the police. To support this aim, for 2025/26, £376.8 million will be available to forces to support officer numbers. This funding will be distributed as follows:

• £270.1 million will be ringfenced funding, which PCCs will be able to access, as in previous years, by demonstrating that they have met their officer headcount targets.

• £106.7 million will be paid to forces who received additional recruitment allocations in 2023/24 and 2024/25. This funding will be provided as an additional recruitment top up grant. It will be unconditional, and the funding distributed according to how much additional recruitment forces were allocated.

The retention of police officers is a priority for the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Experienced officers are incredibly valuable which is why forces should be using effective evidence-based strategies to manage retention and progression of existing officers. Voluntary resignations rates for police officers remain low at 3.2% compared to other sectors.

As at 31 March 2025, 90.3% of police officers worked in frontline roles (including visible operational frontline and non-visible frontline roles; excluding National Policing, unknown, and ‘Other’ functions), the same proportion as the previous year.

Forces are operationally independent, and the deployment of officers remains an operational decision for Chief Constables.