Essex Police Employee Numbers Sept 2019 – Oct 2020

Keywords

Police; Officers; Retirement; Training; Southend; Workforce

Publication Number

PUB 1131

FOI Reference Number

FOI 14833

Request Title

Essex Police Employee Numbers

Information Requested

Please could you provide the following information.

Total number of police officers
Total number of frontline officers
Total number of support staff
How these numbers differ from 1 year ago.
Number of officers that have retired or left the force in the last 12 months.
Number of officers due to retire in the next 12 months.
Number of officers on long-term sick leave.
Number of officers allocated to Southend.
Number of front-line officers allocated to Southend.
Number of trainees due to complete training to become officers in the next 12 months.

Disclosure with Exemptions

Partial

Information Correct as at

05/10/20

Date of Disclosure

20/10/20

Related Documents

N/A

FOI 14833 Response

Having completed enquiries within Essex Police and in respect of Section 1(1)(a), Essex Police does hold information relating to your request. Under Section 1(1)(b) the below has been provided in relation to your FOI.

Number of officers due to retire in the next 12 months.

There are 68 officers who have the earliest retirement date before 31/08/2021. 

Number of officers allocated to Southend.

315 Officers work out of Southend or Southend Airport as at 31.08.2020 

Number of front-line officers allocated to Southend.

253 Officer work in the Local Policing Team as at 31.08.2020            

Number of trainees due to complete training to become officers in the next 12 months.

As of 31.08.2020 we have 709 officers in training who will have completed the fully extensive training and will be deployable.                                  

Please note that the police service is fluid and officer numbers are likely to fluctuate based on operational requirements and intelligence led policing, indeed deployable resources can be drawn in from elsewhere, including other forces, if demand dictates. Any figures provided therefore would be a historic snapshot at a point in time and would be inaccurate and misleading for the purposes of statistics, they are not indicative of the force overall capability, which continuously changes.

In relation to the questions below, these can be found on National Statistics Police Workforce page on Gov.uk.

Total number of police officers
Total number of front line officers
Total number of support staff
How these numbers differ from 1 year ago.
Number of officers that have retired or left the force in the last 12 months.
Number of officers on long-term sick leave.

Therefore, as this information is already published, and in accordance with Section 17(1) of the FOIA, this communication must act as a refusal notice to provide all of the information that could be interpreted as being captured by your request on the basis that the exemption given at Section 21(1) of the FOIA applies (Information accessible by other means).

21 Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant otherwise than under Section 1 is exempt information.

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1)—

(a) information may be reasonably accessible to the applicant even though it is accessible only on payment, and

(b) information is to be taken to be reasonably accessible to the applicant if it is information which the public authority or any other person is obliged by or under any enactment to communicate (otherwise than by making the information available for inspection) to members of the public on request, whether free of charge or on payment.

(3) For the purposes of subsection (1), information which is held by a public authority and does not fall within subsection (2)(b) is not to be regarded as reasonably accessible to the applicant merely because the information is available from the public authority itself on request, unless the information is made available in accordance with the authority’s publication scheme and any payment required is specified in, or determined in accordance with, the scheme.

Section 21 of the Act (Information Reasonably Accessible by Other Means) states that information is exempt information if it is reasonably accessible to the applicant otherwise than under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.  Section 21 is an absolute exemption and where information falls within the scope of an absolute exemption, a public authority is not obliged to communicate it to an applicant and is also not obliged to comply with the duty to confirm or deny the existence of the information requested.         

In an effort to assist, we have provided a link to the government webpage where you can find this information.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-open-data-tables. In relation to the sick leave question, you will find this within the absence data tables.

You may also wish to refer to our published item ‘Police Workforce Data Including Detective Ranks’ - PUB 1050.