Written questions by Obese-Jecty.

How many (a) police officers, (b) Police Community Support Officers and (c) special constables are planned to be recruited between 1 December 2024 and 31 March 2025.

As part of the Government’s Safer Streets mission, the Home Secretary has made a clear commitment to strengthen neighbourhood policing through the introduction of a Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee. This will include delivering an additional 13,000 police officers, PCSOs and special constables in neighbourhood policing roles and ensuring every community has a named officer to turn to.We are working closely with policing to implement this commitment and will announce our plans for the delivery of neighbourhood officers shortly.

How many (a) warranted police officers, (b) Police Community Support Officers and (c) special constables have been recruited since February 2023.

The Home Office collects and publishes data annually on the number of police workers joining the police service in the ‘Police Workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales.Information on the number of Police Officers, Police Community Support Officers and Special Constables joining the police service between the years ending 31 March 2007 to 2024 can be found in the ‘Joiners Open Data Table’ here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/669a9161fc8e12ac3edb0081/open-data-table-police-workforce-joiners-240724.ods.Information for the period 1st April 2024 to 31st March 2025 is due to be published in Summer 2025.

With reference to her Written Statement of 19 November 2024 on Police Reform, HCWS232, how the increase in the core grant for police forces will be divided up.

On 19th November, the Home Secretary announced that central government funding for policing will increase by half a billion pounds; this includes an increase of over £260m in the core grant for police forces, and additional funding for neighbourhood policing, the NCA and counter terrorism.Force level funding allocations for the financial year 2025-26 will be confirmed at the police funding settlement.

With reference to her Written Statement of 19 November 2024 on Police Reform, HCWS232, what her definition of a community is.

As part of the Government’s Safer Streets mission, the Home Secretary has made a clear commitment to strengthen neighbourhood policing through the introduction of a Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee. More detail will be set out in due course.

What progress she has made on recruitment of (a) warranted police officers, (b) Police Community Support Officers and (c) Special Constables.

This Government is committed to ensuring police forces are supported to tackle crime effectively.The latest Home Office statistics for the overall Police Workforce show a 1.2% increase when compared to the previous year. The total paid police workforce in the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales was 236,588 full-time equivalents (FTE) as at 31 March 2024; an increase of 2,752 FTE, compared to 233,836 FTE as at 31 March 2023. This includes 147,746 FTE police officers (up 0.2% on 147,434 in March 2023); and 81,303 FTE police staff and designated officers (up 3.4% on 78,596 in March 2023).As part of the Government’s Safer Streets mission, the Home Secretary has made a clear commitment to strengthen neighbourhood policing through the introduction of a Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee. This includes delivering an additional 13,000 police officers, PCSOs and special constables in neighbourhood policing roles. More detail on the Guarantee will be set out in the coming weeks.

How many (a) enforced, (b) voluntary and (c) port returns have taken place each month since July 2024.

The Home Office published an ad-hoc release “Returns from the UK between July and October 2024” on 4 November 2024 containing data on enforced and voluntary returns between 5 July and 28 October 2024.The Home Office also publishes data on returns in the “Immigration System Statistics” quarterly release. Quarterly data on returns by return type group can be found in Ret_D01 of the “Returns detailed datasets”. Monthly returns data is not available. The latest data is for June 2024, with data up to September 2024 to be published on 28 November.Further information on future scheduled Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the “Research and statistics calendar”.

With reference to paragraph 4.20 of Autumn Budget 2024, HC 295, published on 30 October 2024, by how much the core government grant for police forces will be increased for Cambridgeshire Constabulary.

The Budget confirmed that the core government grant for police forces will increase. Further details and force level allocations will be set out at the provisional settlement in December.