The information is as follows:
(a) It is a matter for individual chief constables, in consultation with police authorities, to determine the number of police officers that are recruited to their local police force.
(b) The available data are given in the following table.
2002-03 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07 England and Wales 7,457 10,867 8,058 6,549 6,531 1 Recruits include those officers joining as police standard direct recruits and those who were previously special constables. This excludes police officers on transfers from other forces and those rejoining. 2 Financial year runs 1 April to 31 March inclusive. Comparable data are not available prior to 2002-03. 3 Full-time equivalent figures that have been rounded to the nearest whole number. Because of rounding, there may be an apparent discrepancy between totals and the sums of the constituent items.