Police: Manpower

Ms Buck
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) police officers and (b) police community support officers there were in each London local authority area in (i) 1997 and (ii) 2008-09; and what the total strength of the Metropolitan police service was in each of those years.

Mr. Coaker
Police personnel statistics are collected by police force area and not by local authority. However, there are strength data available at basic command unit level, which within London equates with local authority, from 2002-03 onwards.

There were 26,667 full-time equivalent police officers working for the Metropolitan police and 859 working for City of London police as at 31 March 1997. Police community support officers were not introduced until 2002-03. Data for the current financial year will not be published until July 2009. Police service strength data for 2007-08 can be found at:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs08/hosb0808.pdf

and supplementary tables for strength at BCU level at:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs08/hosb0808add_tab.xls

Damian Green
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police officers are working at each port of entry on the UK border.

Mr. Coaker
Police personnel statistics are not collected within the Home Office by UK ports, but rather by police force authorities in England and Wales only. Following consultation with ACPO, data regarding police officers whose primary function is “ports” are, under section 31 (Law Enforcement) of the Freedom of Information Act, withheld from the public domain as disclosure may be likely to prejudice the prevention or detection of crime.