Interest in becoming a police officer falls by a third
There has been a substantial fall in the number of people interested in becoming police officers, according to new data released by a police recruitment jobsite.
Figures released by Allpolicejobs.co.uk, which attracts more than one million visitors each year, reveal that interest in becoming a police officer plummeted by nearly a third in 2021/22 compared with the previous year. Nearly every other policing role recorded a rise in interest for the same period.
Richard Place, Allpolicejobs.co.uk managing director, said: “Our huge traffic figures mean we are able to accurately measure statistical trends in police recruitment. We know exactly how many people click on new recruitment vacancies and how many then click through to the application page.
“Our latest data shows that what we’re hearing anecdotally from individual forces is reflected nationally and that is less people are interested in joining the police service. Given the Government’s commitment to recruiting 20,000 new officers over three years, this is a worrying trend.
“All sectors are struggling to recruit people and it is likely that policing has been impacted, but there will be other factors, some of which are within the control of policing, some of which aren’t. The concern is that if the pool of applicants is shrinking, will the police service be able to continue to recruit the highest quality recruits?”
Despite the fall in interest in vacancies for new recruits, many other policing uniform and non-uniform policing roles saw a sharp rise in visitors. There was significant growth in interest from serving officers looking for promotion. The number of people looking to work in police IT, technical support and project management has also risen considerably.
