Analysis of national Special Constable statistics for England and Wales Based upon National Statistics for the Police Workforce, 31st March 2020 (Published July 2020) Dr Iain Britton INTRODUCTION This analysis of national statistics on the Special Constabulary in England and Wales is based upon the Police Workforce National Statistics. These statistics are published twice annually, relating to 31st March and 30th September, and provide the most reliable source of data on the Special Constabulary over time that is available. The analysis focuses on the Special Constabulary and seeks to identify key trends and strategic issues within the data. This analysis of national statistics on the Special Constabulary in England and Wales is based upon published data provided through the Police Workforce National Statistics. These statistics are published twice annually, in July (relating to 31st March) a full data set is produced, and in January (relating to 30th September) a headline data set is provided. This analysis provides a summary across this publicly available data. Accessing the full national published data set: The Police Workforce National Statistics published since March 2010 for England and Wales can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales The statistics published prior to March 2010 can be accessed via the Home Office Statistical Bulletins site of the National Archive: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218143229/http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/hos barchive.html The full open-access data tables for the Police Workforce Statistics for England and Wales can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-open-data-tables Comments on interpreting the data The data published nationally in respect of the Special Constabulary only relates to headcount, joiners, leavers, ethnicity, gender and age. As such, whilst it can provide a detailed insight through time on the numbers and demography of the Special Constabulary, the national data set does not provide any information in terms of activity, performance and effectiveness. Whilst the numbers of Special Constables are very important, particularly in a context such as the present period in which those numbers have been and continue to fall significantly, these workforce statistics should be considered in the round of other data in relation to hours, activity, outputs and outcomes. The analysis provided here is also only as accurate as the data provided by forces and published nationally. The national data set appears to tend to overestimate the overall numbers of Special Constables, in part because force data management systems have been slow in removing Special Constables following resignation. There will also be a gap between the formal cohort size of Special Constables reported in official statistics and the ‘active’ cohort of Special Constables, meaning that a proportion of the Special Constabulary will be dormant but still recorded within these figures. Finally, there are also some inconsistencies of practice between forces, for example different timings for newly recruited Special Constables to be added to the figures. 1 KEY HEADLINES 1) The number of Special Constables is at an historic low, having fallen 53% since 2012 to a current level (not including the British Transport Police) of 9,571 in March 2020. The annual reduction in the year to March 2020 was 10.1%. 2) Recruitment into the Special Constabulary in the year to March 2020 has also been at an historic low. This low level of recruitment is the primary driver of the reductions in numbers nationally. This is reflective of recruitment freezes and reductions in recruitment and training capacity available in forces, partly a consequence of higher resourcing of increased Regular recruitment volumes. 3) The annual attrition rate – the proportion of Special Constables who have resigned during the year – remains comparatively high at 29.8%. This is mainly reflective of the high proportion of joiners into the Special Constabulary motivated by a career in the Regular service, who tend to have shorter volunteering careers as Special Constables. 4) The year to March 2020 was notable in the small number of forces growing their Special Constabularies. And in contrast, 14 forces saw reductions of 20%+ within the year in Special Constable headcount, reflecting the widespread nature of the pattern of reductions. 5) The numbers of Special Constables continue to vary widely across forces, with six-fold differences in the sizes of Special Constabularies in terms of Special Constables per 100k population and Special Constables per Regular officer. 6) There is little movement in the data in respect of gender and BAME representation, which in March 2020 nationally reflected 28.7% of Special Constables were female and 10.8% identified as BAME. The Special Constabulary has a much higher proportion of officers 25 and under than the Regular service, but this has also been the fastest-shrinking age band in the Special Constabulary cohort over recent years. 7) Whilst the most recent annual falls do not signal a softening of pace of reduction (indeed they represent a slight rise from the previous year, and indeed a more marked rise in pace of reduction outside of London), there are signs in wider analysis of the data that the pace of reduction may ‘bottom out’ over the next 2-3 years. The Metropolitan Special Constabulary may already be at that ‘bottoming out’ point, and partly due to an increased volume of recruitment, did not see the sort of reductions that were apparent elsewhere during 2019- 2020. 2 CONTINUING NATIONAL REDUCTIONS IN NUMBERS The number of Special Constables has once again fallen in the period to end of March 2020, representing an eighth consecutive year of annual reductions. The headcount of Special Constables at end of March 2020 was 9,571 (excluding BTP, with the addition of British Transport Police the figure is 9,815). This is the lowest figure in modern times, it represents the first time the national total for Special Constables has fallen below 10,000, and it now reflects a total fall of more than half in numbers (53%) from the peak in Special Constabulary headcount in 2012. On the whole looking at the data at a national level, there is little sign in the most recent data period of a ‘softening’ of the downward trend, which as shown in the table below remains with a recent trend of a circa ten percent per year rate of reduction. The -10.1% annual reduction, and -4.7% six monthly reduction, sit broadly in line with the rate of shrinkage of the Special Constabulary over the past 2-3 years. However, there does seem to have been a period of peak rate of reduction in 2016 and 2017, with +15% reductions in 2017, which saw steeper rates of reduction than the more recent two years of data. 3 Number of Special % change on previous % annual change Constables six months March 2012 20,343 September 2012 19,154 -5.9% -1.3% March 2013 19,011 -0.7% -6.5% September 2013 18,068 -5.0% -5.7% March 2014 17,789 -1.5% -6.4% September 2014 16,722 -5.6% -7.3% March 2015 16,074 -3.9% -9.4% September 2015 16,050 -0.1% -4.3% March 2016 15,996 -0.3% -0.5% September 2016 14,864 -7.1% -7.3% March 2017 13,503 -9.2% -15.6% September 2017 12,601 -6.7% -15.2% March 2018 11,690 -7.2% -13.4% September 2018 11,029 -5.7% -12.5% March 2019 10,640 -3.5% -9.0% September 2019 10,039 -5.6% -9.0% March 2020 9,571 -4.7% -10.1% For each of the past four years, Special Constables have been the fastest shrinking element of the police family (compared to data for Regular officers, police staff and PCSOs). Whilst Regulars and police staff have seen a solid growth in numbers in the most recent year (2019 to 2020), Special Constables have in contrast seen a double-digit decrease. 4 Looking nationally at the number of Regulars compared to the number of Special Constables, the past eight years have seen a shift from a ratio of one Special Constable to every 6.5 Regulars in 2012 nationally to a ratio of one to every fourteen Regulars in March 2020. Some caution is needed in comparing data over a longer time period, particularly in that data quality and the nature of the Special Constable role have changed a lot in the fifty years since 1970. Nevertheless, it can be helpful to widen the lens and look at current trends over a longer-term perspective. The March 2020 figure of 9,571 Special Constables represents the lowest figure in the past fifty years. The recent reductions now represent the deepest and most sustained fall in numbers nationally since the seventies. The most recent previous major sustained reduction in Special Constables numbers nationally occurred in the late nineties and early noughties, bottoming out after six-seven years, with an overall reduction of 8,886 (44.7%). 5 The scale of reduction, both in terms of percentage change and in terms of raw numbers, for the period April 2019 to March 2020, is in line with (but very slightly worse) than the 2018-2019 data period. 6 LOW LEVELS OF RECRUITMENT Relatively low levels of recruitment of Special Constables remains the single most prominent driver underpinning the downward trend, with recruitment levels remaining both well below historical trend, and well below levels of annual attrition (resignations). Number of Special Year ending 31st Recruitment as a % of Constables joining in March overall numbers the year 2008 3,904 27.8 2009 3,358 23.1 2010 4,546 31.9 2011 6,275 40.5 2012 6,263 34.0 2013 4,045 19.9 2014 4,804 25.3 2015 4,217 23.7 2016 4,606 28.7 2017 3,041 19.0 2018 2,723 20.2 2019 2,843 24.3 2020 2,435 22.9 The relatively sharp numerical fall in recruitment first seen in 2016-2017 has continued consistently for the four years since, with recruitment under 3,000 nationally for the third year in succession, and also continuing the trend of being under 25% of cohort size.