The Conservative Government is off track on its manifesto
pledge to recruit 20,000 more police officers by March 2023, with
new official figures showing the number of officers actually fell
by 413 in December.
A total of 11,048 extra officers have been recruited under the
Government’s uplift in the 29 months since it started in
September 2019 – a rate of 381 more officers per month. To meet
the target of 20,000 by March 2023, that rate would have to
increase to 597 per month over the next 15 months.
Four police forces now have fewer officers than they did a year
ago, according to the Home Office figures: Thames Valley (down
29), Gloucestershire (down 22), Warwickshire (down 12) and City
of London (down 8).
Responding to the figures, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs
Spokesperson MP said:
“Since is creating more work for the
police, the least he could do is deliver more officers to do it.
“The Conservatives’ pledge to boost police officer numbers looks
set to become yet another of their broken promises. They are
letting down victims of crime and communities across the country.
“With four in five burglaries going unsolved, it’s clear we need
more community police officers to make sure every crime is
investigated properly.”
ENDS
Notes to editors:
The ‘Police officer uplift, quarterly update to December 2021’,
published today by the Home Office, is available here.
The Home Office announced that the
recruitment drive started on 5 September 2019, and later set a
date of the end of March 2023 for its target of 20,000 more
officers. This pledge was included in the 2019 Conservative
Manifesto.
