{"id":285379,"date":"2025-07-23T14:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T14:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/285379\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T14:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T14:14:11","slug":"bbc-verify-live-investigating-illegal-worker-clampdown-and-ukraine-protest-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/285379\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC Verify Live: Investigating illegal worker clampdown and Ukraine protest misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is the government on course to recruit 13,000 neighbourhood police officers?published at 12:32 British Summer Time<\/p>\n

12:32 BST<\/p>\n

Phil Leake<\/strong>
Data journalist<\/p>\n

The number of neighbourhood police officers and community support officers in England and Wales increased by just 214 in the year to March 2025, according to Home Office figures, external<\/a> published this morning.<\/p>\n

There are 17,175 officers in neighbourhood roles, up from 16,961 last year.<\/p>\n

The government has pledged to increase the neighbourhood police force by 13,000 officers by the end of the Parliament in 2029.<\/p>\n

Funding for this began in April, with the prime minister announcing a target of recruiting 3,000 officers in the first year<\/a>, by March 2026.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s data confirms the size of the neighbourhood police force was smaller than previously thought.<\/p>\n

The number was originally estimated to be 19,634 last July, before a data validation exercise uncovered errors.<\/p>\n

The exercise required all police forces to verify their previously published workforce data and 33 out of 43 revised down their figures.<\/p>\n

As a result, the neighbourhood police force across England and Wales shrank by 14% to 16,961 in 2024. <\/p>\n

Some forces had overestimated their neighbourhood officers by a significant amount, with numbers in Gloucestershire and the West Midlands dropping by more than half.<\/p>\n

Forces attributed errors to outdated HR systems, operational differences and the misclassification of classroom-based student officers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is the government on course to recruit 13,000 neighbourhood police officers?published at 12:32 British Summer Time 12:32 BST…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-285379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114902969092642760","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}