The claim

“New House of Commons library analysis of FOI requests to all of the police forces in England and Wales shows a drop of over 5,000 in police units who principally respond to 999 calls.”
Labour party press release, March 10 2012

The background

We’ve found David Cameron wanting before on the subject of police cuts.

The Prime Minister said there would be more officers on the front line despite budget cuts of 20 per cent over five years in England and Wales.

We think that can’t be right, according to figures used by the independent police watchdog Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC).

Now Labour have fired another shot across the government’s bows, with the claim that the numbers police who are available to respond to 999 calls are dwindling too.

The Home Office said: “These are not official figures and we don’t recognise them.” A spokesman also claimed: “Official figures show since March 2010 we’ve seen 500 more officers on the front line.”

The analysis

While sometimes used interchangeably, the terms “frontline” and “visible”, as defined by HMIC, are two different categories. “Visible” police are those who respond to 999 calls, attend traffic accidents and patrol neighbourhoods, the watchdog says.

The front line is bigger, including visible roles as well as specialists like CID detectives.

Labour have chosen to concentrate on the smaller category of visible police in their latest press release, which is based on responses to a Freedom of Information request.

Only 23 of the 43 forces in England and Wales provided data until December 2011. The other 21 only provided stats until March last year.

But the pattern shows a drop in the seven categories of officer that make up the “visible” group (firearms police were left out because so many forces keep the number of marksmen they have on the books a secret).

The forces who recorded the biggest drop in visible police were West Midlands (1,022) and Devon and Cornwall (750). Between them, they make up the lion’s share of the 5,261 full-time equivalent posts already lost.

While both forces queried Labour’s use of these numbers, we’ve seen the FoI responses and the numbers do add up.

But there are two things that need to be spelled out. The first is that we are not talking about an overall loss of thousands of police officers here.

Devon and Cornwall have not shed 750 officers since March last year – they’ve only cut their total number of full-time equivalent by just over 267.

So what we are talking about here is restructuring – a reshuffling of police among the various roles available to them. West Midlands and Devon and Cornwall have decided to reprioritise and divert officers away from the roles classed as “visible” into other areas.

Both forces have increased numbers in other parts of the wider “frontline” category. Both forces, for example, have substantially increased the numbers of officers tasked with investigating “child/sex/domestic” crimes.

But by narrowing their focus to “visible” roles, that’s not something Labour need to point out.

The verdict

Labour’s numbers appear to add up, although the overall cuts in officer numbers are less drastic than those headline figures on “visible” police would suggest, and the numbers don’t give us the broader picture about cuts to the front line as a whole.

That’s not to say that the front line isn’t suffering too, but we’ll have to wait until later this year for HMIC to deliver the final word on that.

Our best guess now, as also pointed out by the independent House of Commons library in their recently updated report on police service strength, is that frontline officer numbers will fall by around 2,500 posts from 2010 to 2012.

We still don’t know where the Home Office get their claim of “500 more officers on the front line”. When they let us know the source of that, we’ll be happy to FactCheck it.

By Patrick Worrall