Police officer quarterly strength statistics: 31 March 2024

Scotland's Chief Statistician has published statistics on Police Officer Quarterly Strength, which gives the number of full-time equivalent police officers employed by Police Scotland.

The key findings of the statistics are:

• there were 16,356 full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers in Scotland on 31 March 2024
• police officer numbers decreased by 7 FTE officers (<0.1%) in the last quarter from 31 December 2023
• police officer numbers decreased by 259 FTE officers (-1.6%) in the last year from 31 March 2023
• this is an increase of 122 FTE police officers (+0.7%) from the 16,234 FTE police officers recorded at 31 March 2007

Police officer numbers have remained similar when compared to last quarter

Chart 1: Total number of Police Officers (Full-time Equivalent) in Scotland, 2007-24

Chart 1 shows the total number of police officers (full-time equivalent) in Scotland between Q1 2007 and Q1 2024. The number of FTE police officers in Q1 2024 (16,356) have remained similar to numbers in the previous quarter (16,363).

The statistics in this release are based upon quarterly returns made by Police Scotland to the Scottish Government, and are a by-product of live administrative processes, generated directly from the HR systems. The data return provides a snapshot of police strength at the end of the quarter. The published police officer figures are sourced from Police Scotland's personnel records and as such the quality and reliability is good.

The next edition in the series, Police Officer Quarterly Strength Scotland, 30 June 2024, will be published on Tuesday 6 August 2024.

Police Scotland publish Management Information which includes sub-national breakdown of officers and police staff by division

The publication file (.xlsx) is available to download below.

Police officer quarterly strength statistics: 31 March 2024

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Excel document

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