Home Office · Police workforce, England and Wales
Police officers by police force area
145,886officers (FTE)
Police officers by police force area were 145,886 officers (FTE) at 31 March 2026.
- Home Office snapshot
- Year ending March 2026
- published 22 July 2026
- Table H4
- row “K04000001 England and Wales”
- column “Total officers(FTE)”
- cell value 145885.6907975
What this measures
Full-time equivalent police officers as at 31 March in each of the 43 territorial police force areas of England and Wales.
What this doesn’t measure
British Transport Police or officers on central service secondments, which the table lists without a police force area code and are not extracted.
Important caveat
Police force area figures exclude officers seconded out to central services and use the ONS police force area codes published with the table. Officers per 100,000 population is calculated by the Home Office from the latest ONS mid-year population estimates and is published only for the latest year in each release; it uses the resident population, and is not published for the City of London, whose resident population is very small relative to the people present in it.
Revision history
No period of this series has been revised since it was first ingested here. Revisions are recorded automatically when a later release publishes a different figure for the same period.
Source
- Publisher
- Home Office
- Publication
- Police workforce, England and Wales
- Release
- As at 31 March 2026, published 22 July 2026
- Source file
- police-workforce-mar26-tables-220726.ods
- File SHA-256
- 03a63dea0f8dd2cb21fa4cae5e940afc8747aae9a3b028e50a724ae1ba80b396
- Retrieved
- 2 September 2026
- Sheet
- Table_H4
- Table
- Table H4
- Row
- K04000001 England and Wales
- Column
- Total officers(FTE)
- Cell value
- 145885.6907975
- Geography
- England and Wales
- Unit
- officers (FTE)
- API
- /api/metrics/police_officers_by_force · /series · /vintages
Government periods
Change during each government, from the level inherited to the last complete period before it left office. Describes the period; does not attribute cause.
- Release
- As at 31 March 2026 · publication page
- Last updated
- 22 July 2026
- Next release expected
- July 2027 (estimated from the usual cadence)