Greater numbers of police officers on London’s streets as Met surpasses recruitment targets

40/03
5 June 2003

The drive to put more police officers on the streets of London led to the Met recruiting well above its target for the last financial year.

Both recruitment and workforce strength targets for 2002/03 have been exceeded:

• 3,489 new officers joined against a recruitment target of 3,413; and
• officer strength reached 28,477 against a workforce target of 28,412.

Within these figures there were encouraging increases in the numbers of visible ethnic minority (VEM) and women recruits:

• VEM officers made up 11% of joiners, increasing total representation within the workforce from 4.8% (April 2002) to 5.5% (end March 2003); and
• women officers made up 20% of joiners, increasing total representation from 16.1% (March 2002) to 16.7% (end March 2003).

However, these figures are below recruitment targets of 7.9% for VEMs and 17% for women.

Rachel Whittaker, Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority’s Human Resources Committee, said:

“The Met has recruited record numbers of police officers over the past year and they are to be commended for their efforts. The training centre at Hendon has introduced double shifts to cope with the increased number of recruits. The MPA is committed to putting as many of these officers onto boroughs to increase visible policing and public confidence.

“The Met is also working hard to encourage the recruitment of staff from visible ethnic minority groups, but the target set by the Government for London’s police service to be made up of 25% VEM officers by 2009 remains a daunting challenge.”

The Human Resources Committee was also told that there were 513 PCSOs in post at the end of 2002/3, surpassing the 500 target for the year, and the recruitment campaign for C3i staff has progressed steadily during the current year with a total of 483 communications officers recruited. The C3i command, control, communications and information project will completely update the infrastructure and technology for handling emergency and non-emergency calls and dispatching officers to deal with incidents.

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