Number of roads policing officers falls by more than 1,000 in ten years
Roads policing officers are being repeatedly exposed to trauma with too few colleagues to share the burden, the Leicestershire Police Federation has warned.
Federation chair Andy Spence said cuts have left traffic officers attending serious and fatal collisions almost daily while struggling to take leave or access training.
“We have on average two to three officers on shift policing some of our major road networks every day. So that is two or three police officers at work for 12 hours each day policing the M1, the A42, the A1 – and all the other main country roads along some of Britain’s busiest motorways,” he said.
“When there is a serious injury or an accident or a death, then those are the officers who go to it and they are being exposed routinely to all this trauma day in, day out,” he said.
Recent analysis of government data by the RAC showed that at the end of March 2025 there were 3,889 officers working in roads policing units across England and Wales, a drop of 22 per cent compared with ten years earlier (5,005).
And there has even been a slight decline in the number of officers dedicated to safety camera partnerships – or casualty reduction partnerships as they are formally known – with 42 fewer this year (144) than a decade ago (186).
Mr Spence has called for more investment in roads policing, adding that where the force deals with a serious injury, assault or a murder, far more detectives are made available.
He warned that unless the decline is addressed, both officer welfare and public safety will suffer.
“The risk is that the public are going to be exposed to more danger, there is going to be more and more lawlessness on the roads, and there will not be enough police officers that are there to deal with it. And the police officers that are there to deal with it are facing burnout. Because if they can’t get the leave, if they’re being abstracted for all the other things, then something has to give at some point.”
Mr Spence said the priority must be rebuilding numbers on the roads.
“The best solution is to provide more police officers full stop. We are massively short of police officers. And one of the priorities has to be road safety,” he added
RAC head of policy Simon Williams said: “It’s clear from our analysis that the number of officers dedicated to roads policing is at a ten-year low which can only be seen as bad for the enforcement of motoring laws.
“Drivers we’ve surveyed express strong concerns about the dangers posed by others on the road breaking traffic laws, whether that’s speeding, drink or drug-driving, using a handheld mobile phone, driving in an aggressive way or not having tax or insurance.
“While automatic number plate recognition cameras have become much more common in the last decade, not seeing as many officers in police cars lessens the fear of being caught breaking the law, which may explain why so many law-abiding drivers are concerned about the behaviour of others they share the road with. The deterrent value of ‘cops in cars’ should not be underestimated.
“We’d very much like to see a return to having more officers on traffic duty, or significant new measures introduced to crack down on those who break the rules of the road. With the Government on the verge of publishing the nation’s first road safety strategy for over a decade, we hope there are plenty of positive measures planned to cut casualties and keep everyone safe on the roads.”