Community Support Officers: Greater London

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police community support officers there were in the London boroughs of (a) Newham, (b) Hackney and (c) Tower Hamlets in each of the last five years. (223531)

[holding answer 15 September 2008]: Information on the number of Police Community Support Officers has been collected since 2005 and the figures for Newham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets are set out in the following table.

*Police community support officers*¹
	31 March
London Borough Operational Command Unit	2005	2006	2007	2008²
Hackney	51	51	66	86
Newham	76	82	105	122
Tower Hamlets	59	79	86	94
¹ Full-time equivalent numbers. ² Provisional data provided by Metropolitan Police.

Volume 479: debated on Monday 29 September 2008