Lucia Goodwin: Starmer’s police officer target risks repeating a failing history

Lucia Goodwin is a researcher at Onward and has authored a report on policing

Police performance in England and Wales is the worst it has been in a decade, with response times slipping and too many criminals operating with little fear of retribution. To address the problem, the Government has committed £200m to recruit 13,000 new neighbourhood officers. But recent history suggests hiring more officers isn’t the whole solution. 

In 2019, the Conservatives committed £3.2bn to recruit 20,000 new officers through their Policing Uplift Programme. Despite achieving the biggest police recruitment drive in the post-War period, one in two forces have fewer officers now than they did in 2010. So, what happened?  

The answer, simply, is retention. Officers are leaving as quickly as they are being added. There were 9,080 police officers that left the force in 2023/4: the second highest number to do so since records began. At this rate, the Government’s 13,000 target would cannibalise itself in just over one year. Crucially, these officers are not retiring but resigning. In 2022, resignation overtook retirement as the primary exit route for the first time. 

The exodus of police officers is no mystery. Being a police officer is a hard job with diminishing rewards. The pay is poor. The workforce is stretched thin. Nearly two-thirds of officers say that their workload was ‘too high’ last year while 63 per cent have had their rest days cancelled over the past year due to understaffing issues. I know of one police constable who has seen adverts from New South Wales police, attempting to poach British cops with the promise of better pay and sunnier weather – a tempting offer. 

When someone chooses to join the police, they understand that the role is challenging and that there are better paid jobs out there, but are motivated by the prospect of a fulfilling and rewarding career of public service.

Understaffing and being forced into serving as stop-gap social care and mental health workers leaves officers providing a poor service, and they are well aware of it. More than three in five officers feel that they do not feel proud of the service they deliver.  

Police officers, for whom it is illegal to join a trade union, have also seen their pay deteriorate more than the average public sector employee and 70 per cent of officers report worrying about the state of their finances almost every day.  

It is not only important to understand that officers are leaving, but which officers are leaving. The combination of poor retention and the normal pressures of retirement means that the force is bleeding experience. More than three in ten officers resigning from forces have over 5 years’ service. This leaves behind a workforce so junior that in 2022, a third of officers were still on their probation period. With so many frontline officers not even fully fledged, it is no surprise standards are spiraling downwards. 

It is crucial that the ratio of senior officers to newly recruited officers is not overlooked if the forces are to deliver a good service. With fewer senior officers to train new recruits, new officers receive poorer levels of support on the job. In 2022, nearly a third of new officers reported they were instead being managed by their tutors on a 2:1 basis rather than the desired 1:1. This dynamic increases the heaviness of the workload on senior officers, while leaving junior officers feeling unsupported. It is a punishing catch-22, which contributes to spiralling retention at both the top and the bottom. 

Starmer is right to focus on increasing recruitment into the forces. But the lessons from Uplift are clear:  as long as the job continues to be such a raw deal, officers will continue to leave in droves. Without a well-thought-through workforce management plan, which focuses on both retention of numbers and experience, Starmer’s 13,500 officer target risks repeating history.