The Force’s officer numbers increased by 83 in the 12 months to March 2022, according to Home Office statistics.
The newly-released data shows the Force had 1,832 officers on 31 March this year compared with 1,749 on the same date the year before.
The 4.7 per cent increase is slightly above the national figure of 4 per cent which equates to 4,927 extra officers and brings the total number of serving officers across England and Wales to 140,228.
Home Office officials said the latest figures revealed the second highest number of recruits in a year since records began, just behind the year ending March 2020 when there were 12,883 new officers.
The recruitment drive is part of the Government’s Police Uplift Programme which aims to bring in 20,000 new officers by next March.
Staffordshire Police Federation secretary Glyn Pattinson said: “We welcome this increase to officer numbers. The austerity years reduced our establishment at a time when demand seemed to be ever-increasing.
“We were spread way too thinly and that had an impact on the service we were able to provide to our communities.
“It is good to see the new recruits joining the Force, but we do have concerns about the pressures they are put under as they seek to learn on the job while also studying.
“We are losing some of these new officers before they have even really got started and, of course, we are also losing our experienced officers at the other end of their policing careers, with some leaving earlier than they perhaps originally intended because of the difficulties within policing in recent years.
“We need the Government to help address the attrition rates, address the pay crisis and make a sustained and long-term investment in policing. We cannot continue with a revolving door whereby almost as quickly as we recruit new officers, we are losing others.”
