The truth about police numbers - does recruitment make up for the cuts?

Record numbers of police are leaving the force, while the government claims to have met its target for recruitment, writes John Rentoul

The Tories made a manifesto promise to put 20,000 extra officers on the street (iStock)

As we report today, the Home Office has published the detailed figures behind its claim to have met Boris Johnson’s manifesto promise to recruit an extra 20,000 police officers within three years.

These figures reveal that the target was met despite rising numbers of officers leaving the force – which raises doubts about whether the 20,000 “uplift” can be maintained for long.

What did the Conservative manifesto say?

It promised 20,000 more police officers “on the streets”. The promise was actually launched before the manifesto, in September 2019, when Boris Johnson and Priti Patel, the home secretary, set out the target to recruit 20,000 more officers in three years, by March 2023.

The Home Office took the promise seriously and tied additional funds to sub-targets for each of the 43 police forces in England and Wales.

Didn’t the government meet that target?

In the most remarkable statistical achievement since Matt Hancock, the health secretary, announced that he had met his target to increase the number of coronavirus tests to 100,000 a day, the Home Office reported a jump in the number of officers recruited just by the deadline. The number jumped from 18,500 extra officers in February 2023 to nearly 21,000 by the end of March 2023.

While Hancock’s test achievement was bedevilled by accusations of double-counting and tests carried out and not processed, independent fact-checkers accept that the 20,000 uplift in police numbers is real.

So, what is not to like?

First, as Full Fact pointed out in April, the recruitment of new police officers only just makes up for the cuts during the years of coalition government and Theresa May’s premiership. “The rise follows a fall in the number of police officers in the years prior to 2017, and there are currently only around 3,500 more officers than in 2010,” Full Fact says.

For its part, the Home Office says: “We have delivered a record number of police officers across England and Wales. We made it very clear to police forces that this large investment means we expect officer numbers to be maintained and they should have robust plans in place to ensure this.

“Voluntary resignation rates in policing are around 3 per cent, which is low compared to other sectors and the current rate of leavers, given the growing workforce, is in line with expected modelling. Policing is a career like no other and our latest survey of new recruits showed 82 per cent [of] respondents were satisfied with the job and 77 per cent plan to stay in policing for the rest of their careers.”

What else is not to like?

The drive to recruit fully qualified police officers means that forces have focused on them at the expense of Police Community Support Officers, special constables and police support volunteers. Their numbers have fallen since the election by 2,300.

At the same time, the number of police officers deployed in support roles has increased slightly. Once these are taken into account, the Home Office figures published today show that there are almost exactly the same number of uniformed police staff in frontline roles now as there were in 2010 – about 123,000 full-time equivalents.

And what about the future?

The 2019 manifesto promise was unusual in that it ran for only three years. Now that the government claims to have achieved that target, the obvious question is: what will happen next? The target was met with an exceptional effort by the Home Office driving local forces to fulfil their quotas, but the figures for the growing numbers of police officers leaving voluntarily suggest that it will be hard to maintain numbers at current levels.

The police, like most public services, report that recruitment and retention are harder now than they have been for many years.