Police forces have hired more than 6,000 officers in the first year of the Government’s recruitment drive to sign up 20,000 by 2023.

The overall provisional headcount of officers in England and Wales is now 135,248, according to Home Office figures to the end of December.

This includes 6,620 hired as part of the 20,000 pledge, a quarterly report on the progress of the scheme said, suggesting the recruitment campaign has exceeded its first-year target of 6,000 by March 2021.

So far, 121,016 applications to become a police officer have been received since the campaign was launched in October 2019.

Police officers in England & Wales
(PA Graphics)

Data gathered since April indicates 40% of new recruits are women and around 10% – of those who stated their ethnicity – were from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds.

Online assessment centres were set up amid the coronavirus pandemic, in a bid to keep the recruitment drive on track when face-to-face meetings had to stop as buildings shut.

The new recruits are in addition to those filling existing vacancies or joining police forces as a result of other job adverts – taking the total number of new officers who joined the 43 forces in England and Wales between November 2019 and December last year to 14,585.

During a visit from Home Secretary Priti Patel on Thursday, Hertfordshire Police Chief Constable Charlie Hall said the force had seen headcount rise by 111 in the last 12 months.

He said: “We in the last 12 months have put on 111 officers, which is making a real difference here, a bit above our target to achieve.

“Those officers are hugely well received in the constabulary, the wider teams welcome them with open arms, but more importantly they are now out there in the communities across Hertfordshire.”

Home Secretary Priti Patel with new police recruits during a foot patrol with them around Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire
Home Secretary Priti Patel with new police recruits during a foot patrol around Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire (Aaron Chown/PA)

Ms Patel added: “We have delivered on our police uplift programme, we will deliver on the 20,000.

“We have 6,620 new police officers, that is great for the British public.”

Boris Johnson vowed to swell the police service to more than 140,000 officers by mid-2022 as part of his bid to become Prime Minister.

Officer numbers in England and Wales fell by more than 20,000 between 2009 and 2018.

When the recruitment drive was announced, some police chiefs called on the Government to make sure the 43 forces in England and Wales received their fair share of resources.

The forces with the highest recruitment target for the first year are the Metropolitan Police (1,369), West Midlands (366) and Greater Manchester (347).

Home Secretary Priti Patel during a foot patrol with new police recruits around Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire
Ms Patel said the new police officers were ‘great for the British public’ (Aaron Chown/PA)

Those to receive the lowest numbers of new recruits this financial year are Warwickshire (41), Dyfed-Powys (42) and City of London (44).

The Government is using headcount figures to measure the number of police officers now being hired, saying this is the “most appropriate way” to track recruitment rather than looking at figures for full-time equivalent (FTE) positions, because new recruits tend to start their career on a full-time basis.

Quarterly police workforce figures, also published on Thursday, said the number of FTE officers was 132,467 at the end of September, up almost 3% since March.

The total FTE workforce of officers, staff and PCSOs was 216,155, up by more than 5% on the previous year.

At the end of March officer headcount was 131,576, according to the latest available data.