Sussex Police on track to receive £5.9 million after hitting staffing targets

Chief Constable Jo Shiner. Picture: Sussex Police

March of this year saw Operation Uplift – a national scheme to recruit 20,000 police officers – come to an end. In an effort to keep staffing levels up, the government has ring-fenced £275m to be shared among Forces who meet their head-count targets twice a year. If the Force doesn’t meet the target, it doesn’t get the money.

During a Performance & Accountability meeting with Police & Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne, chief constable Jo Shiner praised her team for doing a ‘consistently phenomenal job in terms of attracting and recruiting staff’.

Chief constable Shiner said the head-count for Sussex at the end of March had been 3,166 officers – a target which was met. The target for September 30 2023 and March 31 2024 will be 3,205 officers.

Sussex Police’s work-force plan predicts that the Force will have 3,234 officers at end of September and 3,245 at the end of March.

Those figures will include 3,141.5 and 3158.5 full-time equivalents respectively.

The chief said: “We remain confident that we’re going to over-achieve our plans at both of the checkpoints.

“We have been asked whether or not we will have the ability to recruit more and we’re looking at that.

“If we can we will. We are really clear that we will still only take those people of quality.

“Not all Forces do final interviews and have some of the additional local hoops that we have.

“It’s important, we think, that we continue to maintain those because it’s important that those people who are joining policing are suited to policing – but it’s also important that policing is suited to them.”

Mrs Bourne acknowledged that the final interviews had ‘sifted’ out a few people who weren’t suitable for the job, adding: “Better that you know at the beginning than spend a lot of money training somebody and then find out later on.”

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