Written question asked by David Jones (Conservative) on Monday, 8 October 2007, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 10 October 2007. It was answered by Tony McNulty (Labour) on Thursday, 18 October 2007 on behalf of the Home Office.

Police: Dogs

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many dog handlers were employed by North Wales Police on (a) 31 December 2004, (b) 31 December 2005, (c) 31 December 2006 and (d) the most recent date for which figures are available.

Answer

The information is shown in the following table.

Police officers in North Wales whose primary function¹ is dogs, as at 31 March 2004 to 31 March 2007 (FTE)²
	Number
31 March 2004	12
31 March 2005	15
31 March 2006	11
31 March 2007	12
¹ Staff with multiple responsibilities (or designations) are recorded under their primary role or function. The deployment of police officers is an operational matter for individual chief constables.
² Full-time equivalent figures that have been rounded to the nearest whole number. This figure includes those officers on career breaks or maternity/paternity leave.

Secondary information