Written question asked by Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Conservative) on Thursday, 13 November 2008, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 17 November 2008. It was answered by Lord Coaker (Labour) on Wednesday, 19 November 2008 on behalf of the Home Office.

Police: Manpower

Question: (2) how many police officers there were in (a) North Yorkshire and (b) Yorkshire in each year since 1997.

Answer

The available data are given in the following tables.

Table 1: Police officer strength¹ (FTE)² by police force as at 31 March 1997 to 31 March 2008
	As at 31 March:
Police force	1997³	1998	1999	2000	2001³	2002	2003³	2004³	2005³	2006³	2007³	2008³
North Yorkshire	1,338	1,367	1,337	1,283	1,305	1,417	1,444	1,529	1,543	1,636	1,654	1,560
South Yorkshire	3,159	3,182	3,168	3,163	3,197	3,199	3,183	3,279	3,265	3,255	3,254	3,172
West Yorkshire	5,209	5,155	4,982	4,822	4,815	4,889	5,029	5,275	5,631	5,644	5,655	5,744
Yorkshire (combined)	9,705	9,704	9,487	9,268	9,317	9,505	9,656	10,083	10,439	10,535	10,563	10,475

Table 2: Police officers¹ (FTE)² per 100,000 of the population for by police force, as at 31 March 1997 to 31 March 2008
	As at 31 March:
Police force	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004³	2005³	2006³	2007³	2008³
North Yorkshire	183	186	181	173	175	188	193	203	206	216	217	202
¹ This table contains full-time equivalent figures that have been rounded to the nearest whole number. Because of rounding, there may be an apparent discrepancy between totals and the sums of the constituent items.
² Full-time equivalent excludes those on career breaks or maternity/paternity leave.
³ Comparable strength (excludes those on career breaks, or maternity/paternity leave). The Police Numbers Task Force (2001) recommended that a clear presentation was made of the numbers of staff employed by police forces including those seconded into the force and those on any type of long or short term absence. These new calculations were first used in 2003, and are not comparable with data prior to March 2003. The data from 2003 onwards used here are termed comparable because they have been calculated on the old basis to allow comparison.

Secondary information