Oh Mrs May Whatever HAVE You Done?

Last updated on August 15th, 2023 at 05:51 pm

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Oh Mrs May Whatever HAVE You Done?

Don’t worry, she hasn’t done anything new, I just thought I’d take a slightly different look at the long term effects of her, now infamous, Police Reforms, just over 10 years later.

January is a funny old month in the dry world of Police statistics. It just so happens that both the December update on Police Uplift Programme (PUP) and the September update on Police Workforce figures come available in the same week.

I dealt with PUP yesterday. I’m beginning to soften my view slightly on that one, but only slightly. I still feel that we are being bamboozled with figures, which confusingly are counted slightly differently to the Home Office biennial workforce stats, plus they keep certain numbers apart, so they are contained within the report, but you might not immediately notice them.

Time will tell whether PUP will be a success. Personally I feel it will fail, if it’s allowed to, but any organisation that has to recruit 26,000 new officers to increase the strength by 11,000 must have a problem somewhere.

Oh Mrs May Whatever HAVE You Done?
Fig 1

Getting back to Mrs May

Enough of PUP, let’s get back to Mrs May. You’ll be relieved to know that she has done anything new, but I’m more concerned with the long term problems associated with what she has already done.

I’ve already made my feelings on Knife Crime, Murders and Stop/Search known, what sort of shape is the Police Service in after 11 years of Tory misrule?

Oh Mrs May Whatever HAVE You Done?
Fig 2

As is painfully obvious from Fig 2 above we haven’t quite got back to the ‘glory days’ of Policing. I don’t have ready access to reliable crime data, none at all to Incident/Call data but it’s safe to assume that they have both increased.

But how are the individual Forces doing? What is the latest position?

Looking at the most recent released Home Office data a few, and I do mean a small number, of Forces now have fewer officers than they did 12 months ago. Amusingly (to my dark humour) even Mrs May’s home Force has fewer officers now than it did 12 months ago.

Oh Mrs May Whatever HAVE You Done?
Fig 3
Oh Mrs May Whatever HAVE You Done?
Fig 4

Figs 3 and 4 above represent the number of additional officers that each Force has acquired over the last 12 months, or in a minority of cases, the number that they have lost. In the interests of fairness the important part of the chart, in my opinion, is the orange line. The blue columns are straight numbers which don’t really correlate one to the other, due to varying Force sizes, but the orange line represents a percentage increase, which can be directly compared one to another.

For those of you who are still with me and are interested, I’ve done the same thing for Regions. Same rules apply.

Oh Mrs May Whatever HAVE You Done?
Fig 5
Oh Mrs May Whatever HAVE You Done?
Fig 6

As,you can see from Figs 5 and 6 the uplift of each Region obviously tailed off in the second half of the year. The biggest winners are the National Crime Agency and Central Service Secondments.

Finally, a much overlooked comparison (in my opinion). The number of Police Officers per 100,000 head of population. We can see in Fig 2 how the Police Service has evolved over the years, how has the population of England and Wales evolved?

Oh Mrs May Whatever HAVE You Done?
Fig 7

Fig 7 above shows how the population of England and Wales has increased over the years. The red line represents the ‘Trend’, relentlessly upwards over 40-odd years

Oh Mrs May Whatever HAVE You Done?
Fig 8

Fig 8, same rules apply, shows how the number of officers per 100,000 head of population is steadily declining. The solution? The only one I can suggest is to badger your local MP, of whichever party, and try and get him/her/them to support a motion for even more Police Officers. For THIS is what Mrs May has done to our, once, world-leading Police Service.

 

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2 thoughts on “Oh Mrs May Whatever HAVE You Done?”

  1. Great analysis Alan. I feel that people get too wrapped up in stats. I won’t use the old quote but as you indicated the proof of the pudding etc. To me the greatest evidence lies in total absence of visible policing except blues & twos. Police need to be within communities showing their human face not acting like an invading force to deal with a long festering problem. But all the time you’ve got bosses feathering their nests it ain’t to happen.

    1. I’m too far removed from the coal face to be certain, but it seems that Neighbourhood Policing has gone to PCSOs and Response Teams being run ragged. I don’t care how many officers we have, it would seem we need more. Wastage rates amongst PCSOs and Specials are climbing too.

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