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Neighbourhood Policing: Staff

Asked by Sarah PochinReform UKHome OfficeTabled Answered 23 June 2026UIN 10374

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many neighbourhood police officers were employed in each police force area in England and Wales in each of the last 10 years.

Answered by Sarah Jones

The Home Office publishes information on police officers in the neighbourhood policing function annually as part of the ‘Police Workforce, England and Wales: 31 March’ statistical series: Police workforce England and Wales statistics - GOV.UK.

Some forces did not previously make a consistent distinction between certain local policing functions until a data validation exercise in 2024. Details of the data validation exercise are set out here ‘Provisional revision to neighbourhood policing data, at 31 March 2024’. Therefore, the data is not directly comparable over the 10 year period.

While not comparable over time, functions data for police officers by Police Force Area is available in the functions open data tables for March 2015 onwards: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69789c4f128d9c1d09a98bdb/open-data-table-police-workforce-functions-280126.ods

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