New Home Office workforce statistics, published today, show that total police officer numbers in England and Wales have continued to fall, prompting a fresh attack from the Conservative Party on the government’s record on policing.
According to figures cited by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, total officer numbers fell by 566 in the year to March 2026, and by 1,879 since September 2024. Mr Philp said frontline officer numbers fell faster still, down 1,518 in the year to March 2026, from 117,282 to 115,764, and down 6,485 since Labour took office in July 2024.
Mr Philp argued that the government has masked some of the decline by re-classifying officers into “neighbourhood” roles, a category that has grown under Labour’s Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, while, he said, both total and frontline officer numbers are falling overall.
“Labour is letting Britain down with falling police numbers,” Mr Philp said, adding that the fall in frontline numbers was “worse” than the fall in the total, and that cuts to police numbers, combined with early prison releases, showed Labour was “weak on crime”.
Context: a reversal from record highs
The figures mark a reversal from the position the Conservatives left behind in government. Official statistics show that, as at 31 March 2024, there were 147,746 full-time equivalent police officers in the 43 territorial forces of England and Wales, the highest number since comparable records began, and above the previous peak of 147,434 in March 2023, itself achieved through the Police Uplift Programme’s recruitment of 20,000 additional officers.
Since then, officer numbers have fallen in each subsequent measurement period on record: down to 146,442 FTE officers by March 2025, and down further to 145,550 FTE officers by September 2025, according to Home Office data. The March 2025 fall was the first year-on-year decline in officer numbers since 2018.
Neighbourhood policing and redesignation
Labour has pursued a Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, committing to put 13,000 additional officers, PCSOs and special constables into neighbourhood roles by the end of the Parliament, with a first-year target of 2,972 additional personnel by 31 March 2026. The government said in April that this target had been met, with 3,123 additional neighbourhood police officers and PCSOs hired or redeployed since April last year.
Mr Philp’s argument, however, is that this growth in neighbourhood-designated roles has come alongside, not instead of, an overall fall in officer numbers, meaning some of the “increase” in neighbourhood policing reflects existing officers being reclassified rather than new recruitment.
The political dividing line
The government has defended its approach, arguing that the previous Officer Maintenance Grant, introduced under Boris Johnson’s government to help hit the 20,000-officer target, had encouraged forces to keep trained officers in back-office roles rather than frontline policing. The Home Office has said it is scrapping that grant in favour of ring-fenced funding tied to neighbourhood policing.
The Conservatives, for their part, have pledged to recruit 10,000 additional police officers if returned to government, as part of an £800 million-a-year law and order plan that would also see stop and search powers expanded and hotspot patrolling deployed in high-crime areas.
