Staffordshire Police Federation has welcomed the latest figures for the Government’s Police Uplift Programme which show a 5.8 per cent increase in the number of officers serving the county.
However, secretary Glyn Pattinson says the recruitment programme alone won’t undo the damage of the cuts and under-investment of the austerity years.
The latest Government figures show there were 1,779 police officers in Staffordshire Police as at 30 September last year. This is up from 1,681 on 30 September 2020.
Now Glyn has called for Government investment in infrastructure and equipment to support officers in their roles, and for steps to ensure they’re retained by the service as well.
He said: “There’s still some way to go in the recruitment programme but it’s great to be able to welcome our new colleagues to the Force and we wish them well in their careers.
“However, our new colleagues alone won’t redress the problems and the damage caused by the austerity years.
“Policing has changed so much in the last decade too, and we’re dealing with so much more, not least being called upon to support our colleagues in other areas where we’re often seen as the service of last resort.
“We’ve had two years on the frontline of the pandemic, a time when we’ve continued to police our communities, but we’ve also seen other crimes emerge such as trafficking and cybercrime.
“Police stations have been shut, offices closed, and the support infrastructure decimated. We need to start rebuilding that to support our colleagues.
“Retention continues to be an issue. As well as fair pay for a fair day’s work, we need to look at how we support our colleagues and invest in their wellbeing.
“We need proper investment in training so that our colleagues are equipped to face the demands of modern policing.”
Nationally, the Home Office’s Police Uplift Programme statistics revealed there were 139,939 officers in England and Wales as of 31 December – an increase of 11,505 officers.
A total of 11,048 have been recruited from funding for the Police Uplift Programme and contributed towards the target of 20,000 by March 2023 – 55 per cent of the target.
If the 20,000 target is achieved, it would bring officer numbers up to around 148,000, which is slightly above the number of officers in 2010.
Federation of England and Wales interim chair Ché Donald said: “Not only do we have an exponentially expanding population which has grown by four million in the last decade, but the level of crime has increased and become far more complex. In addition, the time officers spend dealing with non-crime issues, such as helping vulnerable people and those in mental health crises, has also risen.
“We need long-term recruitment and sustainable funding in policing, and police leaders must ensure they don’t just focus on getting people through the door, but also do what is needed to retain them, such as fair pay processes, investment in wellbeing and better benefits, as retention is still a problem across the service.
“Forces must also ensure new recruits are given the most appropriate integrated learning that equips them for the reality of policing. These officers are joining after a period when the infrastructure of policing around training and assessments was similarly decimated, and we aren’t sure that forces have shaped themselves to deal with the influx of officers. We need quality not just quantity to ensure the public gets the best service we can provide.”
