In Police Workforce Part 1, I covered overall policing strength across all UK forces and the Republic of Ireland. I provided long-term comparisons for each country against the population, assessed the impact of Uplift in England and Wales, while also diving in to the latest situation for the Met Police.
Important long-term diversity goals in policing are to be more representative of the public served (in line with Peelian Principles), while improving equality and inclusion. So here in Part 2 we’ll explore officer and staff diversity across the characteristics published in the new 2024 police workforce statistics. We’ll be answering common questions, including:
- What proportion of officers are female in England and Wales?
- How many officers and staff are from minority ethnic groups?
- What about diversity in other UK and Republic of Ireland forces?
- When will policing represent the public on demographics of sex and ethnicity?
- How about other protected characteristics, like Age, Religion, Disability, and Sexual Orientation?
With a focus mainly on police officers, I’ll cover diversity ratios across the British Isles forces, plus including that for the Garda Síochána for comparison. Given the detailed police workforce statistics produced by the Home Office focuses on England and Wales forces, I’ll also do a deeper dive into representation here.
“Grit is a passion or perseverance for long term goals. Having stamina, sticking with your future, day in and day out, not for a month, but for years to make that future a reality.” – Angela Duckworth
Proportion of Female Officers in 2024
The above graphic compares the ratio of female officers by force using latest available data from the respective regions. 35.4% of all England and Wales officers are female according to FTE. This has risen from just 23.3% in 2007. The figures are higher when looking at just English and Welsh forces, excluding the slightly lower ratio in the weighty Met Police.
The proportion of women officers in Police Scotland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is almost exactly a third of their respective strength. The British Transport Police are also included in the 2024 workforce stats. BTP remains relatively lower in terms of female representation. Meanwhile, our Gardai neighbours policing the Republic of Ireland are 28.5% female, up from 20.6% in 2007.
Zooming in on the more detailed England and Wales picture, the below graphic shows the 2024 ratio of female officers per force. Note that given the far higher rates of part-time working among women compared to men, calculating the proportion based on headcount (all individuals) not FTE would bring the % female totals around 1% higher.
Cumbria Police top the tables of representation, with 43%, while North Wales and Surrey also exceed 40% female. Bedfordshire, Lancashire, Wiltshire, West Yorkshire, Humberside, and Derbyshire are then all close to the 40% mark. At the other end of the spectrum, less than a quarter of BTP and City of London cops are women. The Met, Cleveland, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Norfolk, Kent, and Suffolk are also relatively lower.
If forces do wish to be truly 50/50 to representative of the public on this protected characteristic, there’s clearly some way to go. The female officer joiner rate has increased to 43% in the last two years. Yet it would still take well over a decade to hit 40% across the nation, far longer in several forces.
Given female officers are 7 times more likely to be working part time than their male counterparts, focusing on solutions to the challenges and barriers facing women in policing will no doubt attract more to policing and close the gap sooner. This also applies for promotion to leadership positions.
Female Officer Promotions and Rank Representation
33% of last year’s police promotions across England and Wales forces were women, a slight increase on the year ending March 2023. Yet as the below chart published by the Home Office shows, female officers are far less represented among the ranks above PC…
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Women Represent 44% of the E&W Workforce
Looking a little wider again at the complete England and Wales workforce, the below graphic from the Home Office report shows the female vs. male demographic across all role functions.
Police staff as usual have the highest female ratio, at 63%. That’s 2/3 of staff being female, compared with 1/3 of officers. PCSOs and volunteers are almost at a 50/50 split, while the dwindling number of Specials are 3/4 men.
This means that of the overall 250,000 or so workforce and volunteers across England and Wales police forces, around 44% are female. With growing officer representation and staff relatively stable, the future seems to be a gradual growth to 50%.
UK Minority Ethnic Officer Representation 2024
The England and Wales officer strength overall is 8.4% minority ethnic.
In the above chart, I’ve summarised the proportion of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) officers in each force around the UK, of those who had stated their ethnicity (Garda don’t report on this metric). The Met Police are highest and shown separately, demonstrating the skew this otherwise has on the England and Wales total figure.
The 1.8% in Police Scotland is based on latest data there from 2022. Scotland’s 2022 Census puts this group at just over 4% in the general population. The 2.7% observed for officers in Wales compares to the Welsh population of 6.2% BME. The Northern Ireland figure of just 0.6% compares against the latest population ratio being 3.4%
Note that ‘minority ethnic’ (aka ‘BME’) is defined in official stats as just the non-white minority groups, i.e. excluding Eastern European and Gypsy / Roma minorities. For wider context, Race is a protected characteristic which refers to a person’s language, culture, colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origins. Again, in official stats for UK public sector proportionality assessments, Race is currently inferred by the sole factor of ethnicity.
Focusing on England and Wales, but expanding the view to include Police Staff, PCSOs and other roles, the picture looks slightly different. The below chart is direct from the Home Office England and Wales police workforce publication. While officers and staff are relatively low at between 8-9%, PCSOs, Specials, and Volunteers range between 12-14%. That’s a fair bit closer to the “police are the public and the public are the police” goal of 18%.
Minority Ethnic Police Officers vs. Public in 2024
When it comes to ethnic groups, the goal again is to be more representative of the public, by increasing policing’s representation of ‘minority ethnic groups’ (especially among officers). The recent progress report for the Police Race Action Plan (which focuses on the Black subset of the minority ethnic population) reemphasises this goal and is a worthwhile read for aspiring police leaders.
However, given how the obvious long term policing and population trends, the unspoken truth about this goal is that policing is chasing an elusive and unattainable dream, stuck in a never-ending game of chasing its tail.
“1.3% per cent of all police officers are from Black backgrounds, even though Black people make up around 4% of the general population.” – PRAP 2024 progress report
The gap between policing and the public is just getting wider, as shown by the red lines in the chart above. In 2014, the gap was 9%, whereby England and Wales forces had just over 5% minority ethnic officers, against the public figure of 14%. Now that gap has risen to 10% overall, despite increased minority ethnic representation within the police.
The variation in this ‘gap’ between forces in turn is massive. The forces I’ve selected above are the largest in England and Wales. Sorted in size order, they represent well over half of all officers.
The largest differences between the public and the police representation emerges in the Met Police, at 29%, with West Midlands Police not far behind at 24%. Thames Valley Police, West Yorkshire, and Greater Manchester are between 14-15% short. The smallest gaps are naturally in those places where the minority ethnic population is smaller, such as in Devon and Cornwall. Proportionally however, all forces appear to have only between a third or half of the minority ethnic officer representation observed in their respective populations.
BME Representation an Elusive Dream? Equality 50+ Years Away…
“Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world.” – Lauren Bacall
Sure, the proportion of officers from minority ethnic groups is growing. But it’s growing slower than minority ethnic groups are growing among the UK population.
Consider the following topical Olympics analogy to demonstrate the point: Imagine me, a retired cop, offering to race Usain Bolt over 10 seconds. Indeed, I’m going to give him a head start. We’re in the blocks… and he’s off! I set off a second later (my reactions aren’t what they were!). He accelerates further ahead at pace, while I muster a few slow metres, all the while lagging further behind. The result? Sure, I’ve made some progress from where I began, but when the 10 seconds elapses I’m now further back from Bolt.
Now imagine instead of a 10 second race, it’s 10 years.
Put another way, imagine saving for a house on your police officer salary. The property is in London and prices are running away faster than you can ever save. While you’ll build up a sizeable sum over several years, it will pale into insignificance when property prices raise by £50k a year.
As alluded to in both analogies this goal, I say equality in BME representation is clearly unattainable; that is, without doing something drastic. Some academics suggest for example, policing should take the drastic (and presently illegal) step of over-recruiting officers from minority ethnic groups via large quotas for several years (at the exclusion of white groups), to catch up with the population.
The Met Police currently aim to recruit 40% of officers from non-white minority ethnic groups. That could be raised to 50%, or even 60% has been discussed. But to fulfil its long-term target of 40% overall officer strength in these groups, simple maths dictates that even at 100% exclusively minority ethnic recruitment, it would take 10 years to reach 2021 Census ratios. Then by the 2031 Census, the London population will be 50% non-white.
These may be considered entirely academic and moot points in any case, when thinking about other challenges such quota “solutions” might bring:
- Are there even enough candidates to fulfil such quotas?
- If there aren’t enough candidates passing the entry requirements and assessments, would standards need to be reduced? What implications might that have for policing?
- Could such solutions backfire, in terms of public relations and potential legal ramifications?
- A point rarely highlighted for London, is it EVER feasible for the Met to be representative of the population in this way? Given half Met Police officers reside outside London (housing affordability being a key reason), by default police officers in London aren’t the public and the public aren’t the police.
In terms of increasing the interest from candidates, a good place to start instead may be fixing some of the barriers faced by minority ethnic officers in the job. Not to mention implementing the relevant recommendations from the Casey Review (among others), while encouraging and educating police leaders to take tangible actions to improve the nebulous notion of ‘police culture’.
Age, Religion, Disability, and Sexual Orientation
The England and Wales workforce statistics provide additional demographic information. While Sex and Race are the two most discussed characteristics in the debates around diversity and inclusion, other characteristics like Age, Religion, Disability, and Sexual Orientation are just as equally protected in law. Yet they receive little attention, are more poorly recorded, and rarely reported. Until now…
Age
Above I compare the age profile of each broad role in policing for 2024. For police officers, 13% across England and Wales are aged under 26. Those officers over 55 remain proportionately low, at just 2%. The police officer pension will be a large part of the rationale, despite recent unfavourable changes (to say the least!), making proportionality with the general working-age population an impossible aspiration. Although forces care less about this characteristic than others.
The below chart shows changes in police officer age groups over time. Recent years have seen increases in those 18-25 age bracket, as part of the police degrees and Uplift schemes. 13% is now more proportionate to the rate observed among the working age public. While those officers over 55 has remained small, the slight growth in recent years may well be the response to the unfavourable pension scheme changes.
Religion
While the Home Office report the religion demographics of police officers for 2024, there’s no real comparison to whether that’s representative of the public. In the below table, I’ve laid it out for you…
Proportionately, it seems Christianity is only slightly underrepresented among officers, whereas other religions and no religion are a little overrepresented. Muslims and Hindus seem proportionately underrepresented, while Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jews are closer to being matched.
Disability & Sexual Orientation
I’ve summarised the officer profile for the protected characteristics of Disability and Sexual Orientation into one simple graphic below.
The proportion of England and Wales officers with a declared disability is 9.2%, around half that of the general population.
For Sexual Orientation, 91.8% of officers declared themselves as heterosexual or straight. This is underrepresented compared to the England and Wales public. Lesbian, gay, bisexual or other orientation officers form 8.2% of the (known) cohort, double the rate in the general population according to the Census.
Police Scotland and PSNI Officer and Staff Diversity
For some final context on the diversity of UK policing, let’s not leave out colleagues in Police Scotland and PSNI.
As shown above, Police Scotland publish an array of diversity demographics on their website. This is apparently supposed to be published annually, though appears somewhat out of date, with the above table an extract of their 2022 report. The demographics however are extensive, covering Disability, Race (including what it calls WME [White Minority Ethnic]), Sex, and Sexual Orientation.
PSNI seem to publish latest snapshots rather than any longer term data as standard, though they do so across the protected characteristics of Religion, Sex, and Race. As you might expect, the proportionality between Protestant and Roman Catholic comes top of the list, as that is a higher priority for PSNI diversity monitoring.
As with Police Scotland (and true for most forces in England and Wales), there is a great contrast again on the % female ratio between officers and staff: Police officers are underrepresented while staff are overrepresented.
Diversity: What’s the Point?
Looking at all of this information and being aware of the general goal in policing (derived from the Peel Principles) that ‘police officers should have the same demographics of the public’, you might be forgiven for thinking that’s quite a challenge. It is patently a folly to try and precisely match the diversity and variation seen among the public, across an array of protected characteristics and other demographics (like social mobility for example), while those demographics are constantly shifting and the people within them have an equally diverse array of preferences for and influences upon their career choices.
However, there are clearly always improvements to be made and opportunities to do better in line with the Public Sector Equality Duty objectives, which are often ignored within the ideological battlegrounds of DEI:
- Eliminate unlawful discrimination
- Advance equality of opportunity
- Foster and encourage good relations between groups
You as an aspiring police leader for example would do well to develop yourself learning about how to make a positive difference to the culture around you, your team(s), and the wider police force. How would you answer the following police promotion board question right now?
“As a newly promoted Sergeant / Inspector / Chief Inspector, how will you help the force improve its culture and be more inclusive to minority groups?”
Not quite sure? Fear not, with a little work you’ll soon have the answers.
“Action expresses priorities.” – Mahatma Gandhi
I hope you’ve found Part 2 of this comprehensive review of police workforce statistics helpful. If you’re aspiring to the Inspector ranks (or beyond!), getting to grips with quantitative information and strategic performance management is a ‘necessary evil’; you may even be subject to Numerical Reasoning Tests as part of the promotion process!
As a reminder, Part 1 covered the entire UK & Ireland police workforce picture. In Part 3, we’ll explore officer joiners and leavers to understand whether policing remains an attractive career, and what the end of Uplift portends for the future.
Kind Regards, Steve
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