Record police numbers - promise to recruit 20,000 new police officers kept
The Conservatives promised at the last election to recruit 20,000 more police officers. That promise has now been kept and surpassed.
- Latest figures show that since the Police Officer Uplift recruitment drive was launched in 2019 by the Conservative government. the 43 police forces in England and Wales have recruited an additional 20,951 police officers recruited, delivering on our flagship manifesto commitment and putting a record number of officers into communities.
- Getting extra police officers recruited across the country builds on our Beating Crime Plan and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act – reducing crime, protecting victims and making the country safer.
- This means that police numbers in England and Wales are now higher than they have ever been before, more than reversing the cuts in police numbers which were made in the first part of the last decade after the economy was crashed on Labour's watch.
We will continue to protect the public from crime.
Recruiting these extra police officers, delivering and exceeding our manifesto promise, will help to keep our streets safe. Let me repeat: we have recruited 20,951 new officers since announcing our Police Uplift Programme in September 2019, backed by £3.6 billion in extra funding, bringing the total number of officers to 149,572 – the highest number ever.
Conservative action and achievements to protect the public from crime includes -
- Cutting crime, excluding fraud, by almost 50 per cent since March 2010, making our streets and communities safer. In the year ending March 2010 there were 9,544,000 offences in England and Wales excluding fraud and by the year ending June 2022 the number of offences had fallen to 4,930,000. It is not possible to provide a comparison for all crime (including fraud and computer use) since 2010.
- Rolling out ‘hotspot’ police and enforcement patrols and Immediate Justice schemes, delivering swift and visible punishments and cracking down on offenders. 16 areas in England and Wales will be funded to support either new ‘hotspot’ police and enforcement patrols in areas with the highest rates of anti-social behaviour, or trial a new ‘Immediate Justice’ scheme to deliver swift and visible punishments.
- Investing over £17 billion of funding in our police, giving them the resources they need to make the streets safer. Police funding is £17.2 billion for 2023-2024, including £1 billion for Counter Terror policing, as well as £1.1 billion for tackling national priorities such as county lines drugs, child sexual abuse, and modern slavery.
- Enshrining the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act into law, keeping dangerous offenders behind bars for longer. Our PCSC Act introduces whole life orders for child killers, life sentences for drivers who kill while intoxicated, and ends the automatic early release of dangerous violent and sexual offenders.
- Introducing our Beating Crime Plan, delivering the most comprehensive strategy of its kind yet. This plan is our blueprint for cutting crime, and by combining prevention, deterrence, and enforcement, it will put victims first and restore confidence in our justice system.
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