Question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the oral contribution of 13 December 2018 of the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, Official Report column 432, whether police forces will be required to use any of the approximately £150 million provided to cover unexpected increases in their contribution to public sector pensions in 2020-21.
Answer
The Home Office collects and publishes statistics on the number of police officers employed by each police force in England and Wales on a bi-annual basis. These figures present a picture of the workforce as at the 31 March and as at 30 September each year. These data are published in the ‘Police workforce, England and Wales’ statistical publication, which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales
Data on the number of officers per 100,000 of the resident population, by police force area, are published on an annual basis. The latest available data on the number of police officers per 100,000 of the population can be found in Table_H4 of the data tables accompanying the main release, the latest of which can be accessed here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2018
Data on the number of police officers are collected at Police Force Area level only, and cannot be broken at local authority level.
The Home Office does not hold information on response times of the police.