Recruitment drive sees extra police taken on

More than 150 extra police officers were hired in the North East over the last year as part of a national recruitment drive, new figures show.
Northumbria Police numbers increaseNorthumbria Police numbers increase
Northumbria Police numbers increase

Home Office figures show that there were 3,557 police officers in Northumbria Police in December – an increase of 162 (4.8%) on the 3,395 a year before.

The Home Office launched the police uplift programme in April 2020 with the aim of recruiting 20,000 new police officers nationally by March 2023.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

This would require a 15.6% rise in police officers in England and Wales and, by December, 11,505 had been recruited – a 9% increase.

The majority (11,048) were hired through the uplift programme.

In Northumbria, the number of officers has risen by 13.7% to 428 since 2020 – with 369 recruited through the Home Office initiative.

The increases follows dwindling police officer numbers between 2009 and 2017 – when officer number fell from almost 145,000 to just over 120,000.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Che Donald, national vice-chairman of the Police Federation, said: "The current uplift programme to recruit 20,000 additional officers – which is now only halfway there – doesn’t go far enough, as it simply replaces the number of police officers lost during the years of austerity.

"Not only do we have a population which has grown by four million in the last decade, but the level of crime has increased and become far more complex.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We are evolving our approach to emerging crime threats such as fraud, on top of giving the police the powers and tools they need to stop crimes happening in the first place.”