Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether the rate of recruitment and resignation of police firearms officers has remained stable over the past five years.

The Home Office collects and publishes information annually on the number of armed police officers in the Police use of firearms statistics. The latest available data is for the year ending 31 March 2024 and can be accessed at at Gov.UK.

There were a total of 6,473 armed officers as at 31 March 2024, a decrease of 3% (-178) compared with 31 March 2023 (6,651).

Of the 6,473 armed officers, 5,861 were operationally deployable armed officers (91%). This proportion was the same as the year ending 31 March 2023, and 2 percentage points lower than in the year ending 31 March 2022 (93%).

As at 31 March 2024, there were 3% fewer (-177) operationally deployable armed officers than in the year ending 31 March 2023. ‘Operationally deployable’ excludes officers who were absent due to sickness (long or short-term) or on restricted duties.

A 5-year armed officer uplift programme, with the aim to train and equip 1,000 extra firearm officers was announced on 1 April 2016 (separate from the recent recruitment of an additional 20,000 officers). Following the programme, the number of operationally deployable armed officers increased from 5,639 on 31 March 2016, to a peak of 6,621 on 31 March 2019 (Figure 4).

Since 31 March 2019, the number of operationally deployable armed officers has decreased by 760 (to 5,861 on 31 March 2024). This is the fifth consecutive year that the number has decreased. The number of operationally deployable armed officers is 4% (222) higher than before the armed officer uplift programme (31 March 2016).