Written question asked by David Ruffley (Conservative) on Monday, 9 February 2009, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 11 February 2009. It was answered by Lord Coaker (Labour) on Monday, 23 February 2009 on behalf of the Home Office.

Police: Recruitment

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) applicants and (b) recruits there were to each police force in 2007-08.

Answer

The information is as follows.(a) The requested data are given in Table 1.(b) The requested data are given in Table 2.

Table 1: Number¹ of formal application forms² received by police forces, 2007-08
	Number
Avon and Somerset	n/a
Bedfordshire	456
Cambridgeshire	21
Cheshire	165
Cleveland	n/a
Cumbria	431
Derbyshire	1,310
Devon and Cornwall	463
Dorset	n/a
Durham	n/a
Dyfed-Powys	n/a
Essex	1,262
Gloucestershire	n/a
Greater Manchester	4,972
Gwent	1,031
Hampshire	1,968
Hertfordshire	659
Humberside	441
Kent	2,521
Lancashire	4,370
Leicestershire	435
Lincolnshire	1,020
London, City of	850
Merseyside	550
Metropolitan Police	5,498
Norfolk	n/a
Northamptonshire	749
Northumbria	2,590
North Wales	346
North Yorkshire	n/a
Nottinghamshire	279
South Wales	n/a
South Yorkshire	893
Staffordshire	n/a
Suffolk	n/a
Surrey	n/a
Sussex	936
Thames Valley	n/a
Warwickshire	n/a
West Mercia	1,005
West Midlands	3,451
West Yorkshire	2,149
Wiltshire	n/a
n/a = Data not available. Force was not able to supply data at the time of collection.
¹ Provisional management information data collected for planning purposes only. Data has not undergone usual quality assurance practices (including validation with individual police forces) and are therefore supplied for information purposes only.
² Does not include informal expressions of interest. Some forces no longer send out and receive paper application packs and instead receive electronic applications via the www.policecouldyou.co.uk website. Where forces receive application packs from other means it is not always possible to separately identify the number of paper application packs received, and in such cases forces have been instructed to return a zero response.

Table 2: Police officer recruits¹ (FTE)² to police forces, 2007-08
	Number
Avon and Somerset	153
Bedfordshire	79
Cambridgeshire	66
Cheshire	30
Cleveland	43
Cumbria	41
Derbyshire	129
Devon and Cornwall	115
Dorset	40
Durham	21
Dyfed-Powys	48
Essex	238
Gloucestershire	76
Greater Manchester	426
Gwent	61
Hampshire	204
Hertfordshire	189
Humberside	95
Kent	149
Lancashire	182
Leicestershire	98
Lincolnshire	36
London, City of	20
Merseyside	200
Metropolitan Police	966
Norfolk	48
Northamptonshire	82
Northumbria	163
North Wales	45
North Yorkshire	0
Nottinghamshire	47
South Wales	54
South Yorkshire	92
Staffordshire	40
Suffolk	63
Surrey	121
Sussex	180
Thames Valley	245
Warwickshire	0
West Mercia	79
West Midlands	497
West Yorkshire	352
Wiltshire	47
¹ Recruits included those officers joining as Police Standard Direct Recruits and those who were previously Special Constables. This excludes police officers on transfers from other forces and those rejoining.
² Full-time equivalent figures that have been rounded to the nearest whole number.

Secondary information