There’s been much in the media about dwindling officer numbers. Most recently in Police Scotland, concerns persist about fewer crimes being investigated, with warnings from the Scottish Police Federation (SPF) about becoming a ‘reactive’ service. Meanwhile, there’s the ongoing budget restrictions and pressure on officer strength in the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). This has even affected the pay award for PSNI officers, adversely impacting officer salary.
In addition, the latest Police Workforce Statistics for England and Wales published in late January this year attracted scepticism. Following the achievement of Uplift, overall strength stagnated. With Uplift now a political football of the past, many are concerned whether the sieve will continue leaking cops, especially given the challenges of new recruitment methods.
But what’s lacking in the news (as always!) is meaningful context, piecing the bigger picture together for the UK with some basic, factual information. So, I’d thought it might be useful to answer the most important questions about UK police officer strength as it stands in early 2024, for example:
- How many police officers are there exactly across England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland?
- Have officer numbers kept up with population growth in each area?
- Are PSNI and Police Scotland really at their lowest officer numbers ever?
Towards the end of this ‘stats corner’ themed interest piece, I’ll also cover officer workforce strength by rank (since 1989!), then give an overall comparison to strength in the Gardaí in Ireland and officer numbers elsewhere in the world for the widest possible context.
I hope you find it insightful and let me know your thoughts in the comments! You might also be interested in my recent other blogs on overall officer numbers and more extensive one on turnover and leavers. I’m also open to sharing my platform, so if you’d like to write a guest post on this or other policing-related subjects close to your heart, get in touch. Let’s begin with the story in Police Scotland, given the media’s ever fleeting attention has most recently been focused there…
Police Scotland 2024 Officer Numbers
There are currently 16,363 full-time equivalent (FTE) officers in Police Scotland, as at the end of 2023. That’s been sinking down consistently over several years, causing a growing concern among the SPF, the force, and the public alike as growing demand seems to be sinking the ship.
But is this a record low? Not quite. 2007 and 2008 (the earliest figures Police Scotland publish) were marginally lower. From 2009 to 2021, officer numbers were stable; even during the years before and after Police Scotland formed in 2013.
The drop off began in 2021, with the force losing nearly 1,000 officers (6%) in just three years. Given the churn of recruitment and wastage, this signifies a mass exodus of its officer workforce each year, not being sufficiently replenished with new recruits.
So how have Police Scotland’s officer numbers kept up with population growth? As with everywhere in the UK, population growth in Scotland has been steadily increasing every year, with around 7% growth since 2007. With the gap between population growth and officer numbers decreasing in the last few years, the officers-per-population has fallen even faster.
See the ‘Officers Per 100k Population’ section for more on this and how it compares with other regions of the UK. For now, let’s move west…
PSNI Officer Numbers in 2024
PSNI currently have just 6,422 FTE officers as at 1st March 2024. This has reduced greatly in the last few years, with Chief Officers lamenting their policing budget shortfalls. In 2010/11, PSNI spent £839m. 12 years later in 2022/23, PSNI total expenditure was also £839m; the same money but a big real-terms reduction, given more than 20% inflation over the same period. No doubt this has had severe implications on officer numbers, because over 70% of its spending is on salaries.
But how does this compare over time and to the population? The below chart spans PSNI’s 22-year history, since the force was formed in November 2001. I have compared for you PSNI officer numbers against the population. Officer FTE data is not readily available, so headcount is used instead (which is close to FTE anyway).
Officer numbers are clearly at their lowest level in PSNI’s history. A sharp decline since 2022 continued a longer-term dwindling trend. There was no such thing as a sizeable ‘Uplift’, as there has been in England and Wales.
After peaking in 2007 at a high of nearly 7,600 officers, they then plunged by 800 in the seven years to 2014. In just the last two years, the drop has been 500 officers. Overall, the peak to the present record low represents a fall of 15%.
In stark contrast, population over this time has increased steadily and consistently by 10%. When both measures are heading in opposite directions, the pressure grows. That means the ‘per population’ officer headcount has deteriorated far quicker, as shown above. Since the high in 2007 of 430 officers per 100,000 population in Northern Ireland, this rate has reduced by a whopping 22% down to a new low of 337.
England and Wales Latest Police Officer Strength
Following several years of Uplift, the latest 2024 report of officer strength in England and Wales showed growth has stopped (as at September 2023). Many believe this portends a decline in numbers over the coming years, given the higher turnover of officers recently. This decline in turn has been linked to the controversial introduction of police degrees.
For England and Wales, there are multiple data sources allowing us to track officer numbers over the far longer term, back even to post-war Britain. A little history lesson in the strength of policing if you like!
As shown in the above chart, police officer FTE has remained stable, after the record set following implementation of ‘Uplift’. This uplift however has only just managed to recover lost ground in officer strength, compared to the booming population growth of over 20% since the late 1990s. It has now reversed the dramatic fall in officer numbers of around 20,000 between 2011 and 2018. These officers were released and retired from forces and not replaced, as Chief Officers figured out how to balance their force books after stringent policing budget cuts from central government (the main source of funding for most forces).
So how do officer numbers in England and Wales compare against the population growth? There are now around 240 officers to police every 100k people, a level last seen and maintained during the 1980s and 1990s. A cynic might argue that the instability and uncertainty since is a side effect of people playing politics with policing.
As an aspiring police leader, what are your thoughts and views on the challenges of officer numbers? Or more specifically, consider the following practice interview presentation scenario, an open goal for well-prepared police promotion candidates at Level 2 (and beyond!) of the CVF:
“How will you manage and prioritise your resources to deliver an efficient and effective service to the public?”
Officers Per 100k Population Compared Across the UK…
So we’ve seen the police officer rate per 100,000 population around each region of the UK for their available history. But it’s interesting to see also how they stack up against one another. Below I compare England and Wales, PSNI, and Police Scotland since 2007, a point from which all have data. The ‘Latest’ available is shown on each line (not all are up to 2024 yet).
With your strategic thinking cap on, what do you read from this data? Understanding and interpreting such information (data literacy) is a part of a more senior manager’s required skillset. As such, this is often featuring in promotion assessment exercises. So readying yourself for the performance management responsibilities at the more strategic ranks of Inspector and beyond is a good habit to acquire!
England and Wales Officer Strength by Rank 1989 – 2023
Adding to the picture in England and Wales forces, here’s a comparison of officer numbers in each rank of policing, and how this has fared since reporting at this level began (over 30 years ago!). This demonstrates how forces have chosen to adapt their ‘workforce mix’ of leadership in the police officer ranks over time. You might be surprised with some of the results, given it has never before been meaningfully presented in this way.
Notice the big drop in Chief Inspector and Superintending ranks over the early 1990s? And what about the massive burst in Sergeants and Inspectors to 2010, before falling off the cliff? At the extreme ends of the rank structure, there are now record numbers of both Constables and Chief Officers. What might be going on here?
If you want to explore further the workforce mix and spend across England and Wales forces, you might be interested in the HMICFRS ‘Value for Money Profiles’. This interactive dashboard allows you to explore the exact spend on every function for each force, set against its ‘most similar’ peers and nationally. Back office vs. frontline, officer vs. staff spend, local policing vs. investigation, and so on. This is certainly a useful report for the scrutineers out there, but maybe a stats-themed blog for another day!
An Garda Síochána Latest Officer Numbers 2024
To broaden the picture we have so far of officer strength around the British Isles, let’s now take a quick look at Gardai officer numbers to compare the UK with Ireland. An Garda Síochána have also been in the spotlight, with strong concerns raised by the Garda Representative Association about recruitment and retention, albeit a fairly positive sounding 2024 budget was recently set to increase strength.
So, as at the end of January 2024, there were 13,918 Gardai in Ireland (officers at all ranks). This equates to 263 per 100,000 population in Ireland. According to the Garda Commissioner’s monthly reports to the Police Authority, this has dropped by over 500 officers since 2020, when here were 290 Gardai per 100,000 people.
The following chart summarises the available data since 2017 in just three checkpoints. Notably, staff strength between 2017 and 2020 increased by a massive 50%. These numbers were maintained and increased a little further during the years of decline in Gardai numbers to January 2024, the most recent figures.
A particularly interesting point with Garda is that despite the big increase in staff strength in recent years, its current officer to staff ratio remains far higher than that of UK forces. England and Wales have a ratio of just under 2:1 (two full-time officers for every police staff member), in PSNI it’s 2.5:1, and in Police Scotland it’s just under 3:1. In Garda however the ratio is well over 4:1. Could this suggest a more efficiently run organisation?
For aspiring officers among the Gardai ranks, my Rank Success support has been used successfully for promotion many times. That’s because my tried and tested leadership CPD and techniques are entirely transferable, even on the other side of the world! On this note, let’s explore and compare officer strength further afield…
How Many Police Officers in Other Countries?
The police officers per 100k population is a good benchmark to compare the UK and Ireland against other European countries. The chart above previews a handy ‘Eurostat’ data source for comparisons, and compares those countries who had reported data for the latest year (2021).
Around Western and Southern Europe, Portugal and Spain are relatively high, with 438 and 376 officers per 100k population respectively. Belgium, France, and Germany are in the region of 310 – 340, with the Netherlands not far behind them at 296. Italy on the other hand have over 400, while Greece and Cyprus have 520 and 545 respectively.
Over in Eastern Europe, it’s a mixed picture. While Poland, Romania, and Lithuania all have between 250 – 275 police officers per 100k population, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic are between 375 – 385. Croatia have over 500 police officers for every 100,000 people.
The Nordic countries of Northern Europe have consistently far fewer officers per 100,000 population. Denmark, Iceland, and Norway reside in the range between the Nordic low of 137 in Finland to the “high” of 206 in Sweden.
Further afield, among reports that officers are leaving UK forces in droves to emigrate to Australia and work as a cop down under, there’s a similar number of officers per 100k people to the mainland UK: 264 as at 2022. That’s similar to the mainland UK levels.
The USA have similar levels to England and Wales, at 243. Canada is more akin to the Nordic countries at just 184. As you might expect, China and India have the most police officers in the world, with 2,000,000 each! But this equates to only 145 or so per 100k people, given their massive populations.
So in the context of this more global perspective of officer strength serving its populus, the situation in the UK seems pretty unexceptional, middle-of-the-road.
By the way, did you know there’s listeners in every one of the countries I mentioned, who are utilising the police leadership development, insights and content featured in my podcast? That’s because this content is completely transferable. Good police leadership looks similar wherever you are! In my latest episode for example, I explore a report about what good policing in the 2020s looks like…
Thanks for your time and I hope you found this ‘stats corner’ piece interesting. Please share your views and experiences about officer numbers in the comments.
Watch out for another blog soon, but in the meantime check out my new podcasts and videos for more police promotion and leadership updates. Or to drastically improve the odds and accelerate effective preparation for your promotion opportunity, why not devour a structured personal toolkit?
Kind Regards, Steve
Want to go further right now? Hit the ground running with your promotion preparation. Get your personal digital promotion toolkit, and/or my Police Promotion Masterclass. You can also contact me to arrange personal coaching support.
