Strathclyde Police puts freeze on recruitment

Strathclyde Police has decided to freeze recruitment for both police officers and police staff having met government staffing targets.

As a result of current uncertainty over budgets, Strathclyde has implemented the freeze on police staff immediately, while the recruitment of officers will be suspended once the current intake of 65 probationary officers enter the Scottish Police College this month.

A planned intake of 100 probationary officers to the college between August and October will not now go ahead.

In the past two years, Strathclyde Police has recruited unprecedented levels of police officers and has recruited an additional 457 officers as part of the government-funded initiative to increase the numbers of police officers in Scotland by 1,000.

Strathclyde Police currently has 8,038 officers, which it pays for out of its own budget. Taking into account officers who are paid for by other bodies, this figure rises to 8,410. Two years ago, there were 500 community officers, today there are more than 1,500.

John Gillies, director of human resources, said: “The public sector is facing an unprecedented period of financial challenge and Scottish policing is not going to be immune to that. While we don’t know exactly the scale of the cuts that we will be facing, early indications are that it could be anywhere up to ten per cent of our budget in the next financial year. We have to prepare for that.

“We have more or less stopped recruiting police staff over the past few months and today we are formalising that. We also have to be realistic about the number of officers we can afford to recruit at this time of uncertainty.

“In the past couple of years, we have seen a massive expansion in police officer numbers. This has allowed us to get more officers out onto our streets and into our communities. Protecting these frontline services will be our absolute priority as we move forward with our plans to meet the challenges that lie ahead.”