PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Safer Neighbourhood Teams: Wirral (25 April 2018)

The Home Office does not hold statistics on the number of operational Safer Neighbourhood Policing teams.

The Home Office does collect data annually on the function of police officers and police community support officers (PCSOs), including the number of full time equivalent police officers and PCSOs primarily employed in Neighbourhood Policing teams and/or Safer Neighbourhood teams. The Home Office collects these data at police force area level only. This information can be found in the data tables published alongside the annual ‘Police workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin, which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales

The latest data available as at 31 March 2017 can be found in Tables F1 and F3 of the police workforce statistics published in July 2017: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/629865/police-workforce-tabs-jul17.ods

Data prior to 31 March 2015 are not directly comparable with previous years as they were collected under another framework with different definitions. Data under the old framework have been published since 2012, and can be found in the supplementary data tables of the relevant police workforce publications via the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales

Officers and PCSOs with multiple responsibilities or designations are recorded under their primary function. Therefore, the data do not provide a complete picture of all officers assigned to neighbourhood policing functions. Further, some forces are not able to make a clear distinction between ‘Neighbourhood Policing’ roles and ‘Incident (Response) Management’ roles, therefore those forces record the majority of, or all, employees under just one function. A more reliable measure is the number of officers employed in ‘Local policing’ roles, which includes both neighbourhood and response functions.

Police functions data are often affected by re-structuring within police forces. Therefore, comparisons over time for specific functions should be made with care.

Decisions on the size and composition of the police workforce are operational matters for Chief Officers working with their Police and Crime Commissioners and taking into account local priorities.