Police Officer Numbers and Roles by Gender Previous 5 Years

Keywords

Officers, Gender, Trained, Advanced, Success, Rate, Course, CID, Roads, Traffic, Collison, Response, Beat, Firearms, Dog, Handling, Local, Partnership, Hub, OPC.

Publication Number

PUB 1486

FOI Reference Number

17630

Request Title

Police Officer Numbers and Roles by Gender Previous 5 Years

Date Range

2018 to 2022

Information Requested

1. How many police officers do you have and how are they divided by gender?
2. How many police officers are standard response trained drivers and how are they divided by gender?
3. How many police officers are advanced trained drivers and how are they divided by gender?
4. What is the success rate on the advanced driving course, divided by gender?
5. How many police officers are there in the following roles, divided by gender?
6. CID
7. roads and crime unit (or equivalent, i.e. roads policing unit, traffic unit, etc.)
8. serious collision investigation unit
9. response
10. beat management
11. firearms
12. dog handling

If possible, I would appreciate data for the questions above on a year on year basis dating back as far as is practicable for you to obtain, ideally at least five years.

Disclosure with Exemptions

Full Refusal with Section 12 Exemption

Information Correct as at

03 November 2022

Date of Disclosure

14 November 2022

Related Documents/Links

N/A

 

FOI 17630 Response

FOI Duty  

First Duty – Essex Police holds some of the information relating to your request 

Second Duty – See below 

Fact - It is not possible to extract and verify all the data in your request 

Exemption - Section 12(1) 

Refusal - Section 17(5) of FOIA 

Reasoning – In respect of Question 4, Essex Police are unable to provide a data report as this is not held in an extractable format, nor is it on a central log.

Each driving course record, would have to be manually reviewed in order to determine the success rate as an individual, then a specific manual report created to determine the overall success rate for the timeframe of this request

– this would take considerable resource to achieve and, therefore, is regarded as excessive and would exceed the time and cost limits under the Act.

Duty to assist – When refusing a request on cost (Section 12(1)/12(2), outside of the act and in effort to assist we can provide the following assistance:

Essex Police can report as follows:

Caveat: The data is correct as at 03 November 2022 – and is a snapshot taken of the establishment recorded at a given point, the actual numbers are subject to change for operational priorities.

 

1. How many police officers do you have and how are they divided by gender?

31.03.2018	2070	972	3042
	Male	Female	Total
30.09.2022	2344	1330	3674
31.03.2022	2340	1307	3647
31.03.2021	2285	1205	3490
31.03.2020	2230	1156	3386
31.03.2019	2117	1037	3154

 

2. How many police officers are standard response trained drivers and how are they divided by gender?

	Male	Female	Total
30.09.2022	992	268	1260

Note. Officers qualified as standard response trained drivers will need refresher courses every 5 years.  When an Officers passes their refresher course, their qualification will be over-written with their new pass date and the future date in 5 years when their refresher is due. Due to this way of recording the data, we are not able to advise on numbers of Officers qualified in previous years.

 

3. How many police officers are advanced trained drivers and how are they divided by gender?

	Male	Female	Total
30.09.2022	207	32	239

Note. Officers qualified as advanced response trained drivers will need refresher courses every 5 years.  When an Officers passes their refresher course, their qualification will be over-written with their new pass date and the future date in 5 years when their refresher is due. Due to this way of recording the data, we are not able to advise on numbers of Officers qualified in previous years.

 

4. What is the success rate on the advanced driving course, divided by gender?

We continually train officers to advanced level until they meet the required standard.  So after 4 weeks of advanced training, being the minimum time of training allowed set out by the College of Policing. We will continue working with the officer until they are successful. As stated, Essex Police are unable to provide a data report on the success rate.

 

5. How many police officers are there in the following roles, divided by gender?

 

1. CID

	Male	Female	Total
30.09.2022	234	228	462
31.03.2022	253	234	487
31.03.2021	215	186	401
31.03.2020	226	180	406
31.03.2019	229	155	384
31.03.2018	238	158	396

Note. Officers within the Investigations Departments of the three Local Policing Areas have been counted here.

 

1. Roads and crime unit (or equivalent, i.e. roads policing unit, traffic unit, etc.)

	Male	Female	Total
30.09.2022	96	23	119
31.03.2022	99	24	123
31.03.2021	110	29	139
31.03.2020	88	23	111
31.03.2019	90	23	113
31.03.2018	94	20	114

Note. Officers within the Roads Policing Department have been counted here.

 

1. Serious collision investigation unit

	Male	Female	Total
30.09.2022	14	6	20
31.03.2022	13	5	18
31.03.2021	12	7	19
31.03.2020	10	5	15
31.03.2019	17	8	25
31.03.2018	16	7	23

Note. Officers within the unit of OPC Collision Investigation have been counted here.

 

1. Response (LPT)

	Male	Female	Total
30.09.2022	764	379	1143
31.03.2022	797	376	1173
31.03.2021	815	373	1188
31.03.2020	780	356	1136
31.03.2019	801	340	1141
31.03.2018	649	236	885

Note. Officers within the Local Policing Team Departments of the three Local Policing Areas have been counted here.

 

1. Beat management

	Male	Female	Total
30.09.2022	219	114	333
31.03.2022	200	102	302
31.03.2021	204	100	304
31.03.2020	207	87	294
31.03.2019	138	58	196
31.03.2018	103	49	152

Note. Officers within the Partnership Hubs Departments of the three Local Policing Areas have been counted here.

 

1. Firearms

	Male	Female	Total
30.09.2022	104	7	111
31.03.2022	104	4	108
31.03.2021	102	4	106
31.03.2020	95	6	101
31.03.2019	99	6	105
31.03.2018	94	5	99

Note. Officers within the Firearms department have been counted here.

 

1. Dog handling

	Male	Female	Total
30.09.2022	27	3	30
31.03.2022	28	3	31
31.03.2021	24	1	25
31.03.2020	24	2	26
31.03.2019	26	2	28
31.03.2018	26	3	29

Note. Officers within the OPC Dog Section have been counted here.

 

Every effort is made to ensure that the data provided by Essex Police is accurate and complete.  However, Essex Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the purposes of providing data to answer specific FOI enquiries.  Please note although data can be extracted from a number of sources via database queries, the results may be subject to inaccuracies.  Care should be taken to understand our return when considering the interpretation or further use of the data.

You may be interested in reviewing the following links to all our published workforce statistics:

National statistics overview: Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2021 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales

General Police Workforce data for England and Wales Police can be found via the below link and includes data up to 31 March 2022:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-officer-uplift-quarterly-update-to-march-2022

The data tables contain the following:

• Police Officers by Force area, including rank, gender and ethnicity breakdowns, promotions, joiners, leavers, length of service, Police Objective Analysis (POA) functions, long-term sick leave, and long-term absence.
• Police Staff by Force area, including gender breakdown, joiners, leavers, POA functions.
• Police Community Support Officers by Force area, including gender breakdown, joiners, leavers, POA functions.
• Special Constables by Force area, including gender breakdown, joiners, and leavers.

Further ethnic breakdowns for England and Wales Police by Region and Force area can be found via the below link and includes data up to 31 March 2022:

Police workforce open data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)