To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police officers there were in (a) Hyndburn constituency and (b) the Lancashire Constabulary area in (i) 1997 and (ii) the latest period for which figures are available. (229254)

The information is as follows:

(a) Police personnel data are not available by parliamentary constituency, but are available for the basic command unit (BCU). Hyndburn falls within the Eastern BCU which had 598 officers on 31 March 2008. The earliest available BCU data is for March 2002 when Eastern BCU had 562 officers.

(b) The numbers of full-time equivalent officers in Lancashire as at 31 March 1997 were 3,248, and as at 31 March 2008 were 3,609.