Police officers leaving force in record numbers

MORE police officers left the South Wales Police force last year than in any previous year.

At the latest South Wales Police and Crime Panel in Merthyr Tydfil, it was revealed that as many as 200 officers left the force in 2017/18 with many having retired.

The force says it will assess 700 potential recruits with a view to taking on about 230 officers for the next 12 months.

Deputy chief constable, Richard Lewis, said: “This is a time of churn. It is quite a difficult issue for us with so many people leaving and bringing so many in. “It is a transition phase.” This was highlighted during a discussion about concerns the force has about the accessibility to an apprenticeship fund to train new officers which it contributes towards through an apprenticeship levy.

All police forces in England and Wales pay the apprenticeship levy to HM Treasury at 0.5% of the payroll.

This creates an apprenticeship fund and a share, based on the Barnett Formula, is believed to go to Welsh Government despite the fact that policing is not devolved meaning that the four Welsh police forces might not be able to access the fund.

In the mean time, grants of £600,000 from the Home Office and £400,000 from Welsh Government have allowed Welsh forces to roll out the apprenticeship scheme for the first year.

Across policing in Wales, it is expected that around 600 police apprenticeships will be required over the next three years with an average annual cost of £2.8 million a year.

The current actual levy paid by forces in 2017/18 was £1.97m.

Speaking about the grant funding, South Wales police and crime commissioner Alun Michael said: “This is so we don’t fall behind with the training of police officers.

“If that happened we would start to fall into difficulties quite quickly.”

Councillor Chris Davies, from Merthyr Tydfil council, said: “This is a really important issue we need to grapple with.

“It is an opportunity for us to grow our own young people.”

He suggested the panel writes to the minister of state for policing about the issue of police recruitment.

Councillor Rhys Lewis of Rhondda Cynon Taf council asked what strategies are in place to reach out to communities in terms of recruitment.

Mr Michael said the representative workforce team had that emphasis and that there was an “absolute commitment” from the force to do this as they have discovered what things work.

Deputy chief constable Lewis said: “There are great opportunities for everybody from the whole of south Wales.

“The police has a role in social mobility.”