Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 29 October (HL9278), what was the total number of police officers in England in 2015.

The Home Office collects and publishes data on the size and composition of the police workforce in England and Wales on a biannual basis in the ‘Police workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin.

From this data collection, the table below shows the total number of police officers in England in 2010, 2015 and the latest year for which figures are available (the year ending 31 March 2020) on a full-time equivalent (FTE) basis and on a headcount basis.

The Home Office has also recently started collecting and publishing police officer numbers (on a headcount basis only) on a quarterly basis to report the progress of the Police Uplift Programme. The Programme is delivering on the current Government’s manifesto pledge to recruit 20,000 additional police officers in England and Wales by March 2023. Taken from this new data series, the number of police officers in England from October 2019 to September 2020 on a headcount basis is shown in the table below.

These data are collected and published on a headcount basis and are therefore not comparable to the FTE figures published in the long-running ‘Police workforce, England and Wales’ bulletin. The latest Police Uplift quarterly publication covering the period to September 2020 can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-officer-uplift-quarterly-update-to-september-2020