England and Wales have fewer police officers than any major European nation

And the Social Market Foundation (SMF) said that this “relative lack of police personnel” was contributing to falling public confidence in law and order and a failure to tackle growing forms of crime such as fraud.

The SMF, a cross-party think-tank, calculated that England and Wales now have 228 police officers per 100,000 people.

By comparison, Scotland has 316, France 332 and Germany 298. The average across 32 European nations was 357.

Australia is the closest nation to English policing levels with 274 officers per 100,000 people.

The calculations were made in a new briefing paper by Richard Hyde, SMF senior researcher.

Reviewing domestic and international data, he found that there was “a clear link between officer numbers and crime levels”.

Mr Hyde said: “The changing nature of crime – especially the growth in fraud – means policing is becoming more labour-intensive. This implies a need for more police staff to keep on top of crime levels, let alone play a role in driving them down.”

If England and Wales increased officer numbers to the 2019 European average of 357 per 100,000 of the population (from the 228 per 100,000 that it was at the end of March 2021) England and Wales would have around 213,200 officers in place across both countries. This would require recruiting approximately 70,000 more, over and above the 20,000 already pledged, as well as ensuring existing officers are replaced when they leave the service.

Such an increase would require an extra £8 billion of expenditure by central government and police and crime commissioners, says Mr Hyde. The extra expenditure would require total spending (central and local) on the police service to rise to just over £23 billion a year, from the £15 billion that was spent in 2020/21.

Mr Hyde says a great proportion of these additional officers (complemented by expert civilian support staff) would need to be employed on the basis that they will become specialists in tackling some of the more complex crimes such as fraud and other economic crimes (together with associated criminal activities such as cybercrime) if the police are serious about reducing crime from more than ten million incidents a year

If these extra officers had been in place in the year 2019/20, it is likely there would have been at least 1.4 million fewer crimes perpetrated against households and residents in England and Wales, explains Mr Hyde. Furthermore, he believes this could have resulted in gross savings to society of approximately £11.1 billion and a net saving of £3.5 billion (over and above the extra £8 billion of additional expenditure on policing required to increase numbers to 357 per 100,000 residents).

The SMF says the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that public confidence in the police to meet local needs is in long-term decline.

The proportion of the public agreeing that their local police “understood local concerns” declined markedly from 75 per cent in 2011/12 to 66 per cent in 2019/20. The percentage of the public saying that their local police “deal with local concerns” also declined noticeably. In 2011/12, 62 per cent agreed with this statement; in 2019/20 that figure had dropped to 53 per cent.

Mr Hyde said: “We know that increasing police numbers can reduce crime rates, yet it is an aspect of policing that isn’t as prominent as it should be. We need a proper evidence-based public debate to identify the appropriate police numbers for maximising the impact on crime in England and Wales.

“As we look ahead, police and policymakers must be alert to the way crime has changed and will likely continue to – the growth of online fraud alone has made tackling crime more complex, and thus more labour-intensive. We need more officers not only to stay on top of the current high levels of crime, but to reduce it substantially.

“Our major European counterparts have more police per head than England and Wales, and we must at least match them if we are serious about rising to the challenge of complex crime such as fraud, organised criminal gangs and cybercrime, and to restore trust in policing.”