Forces should be ‘honest and open’ on officer assaults

THE recorded number of assaults on police officers in England and Wales is set to rise dramatically after the Home Office demanded more accurate data from forces.

Figures published by the Home Office have until now been based on data from forces’ Health and Safety records – but from this year it will also be seeking crime data.

According to Government figures for the last financial year – published in July 2015 – in Essex, there were 353 recorded assaults and 418 assaults without injury on a constable recorded in the past year.

There were 23,000 assaults on police officers across England and Wales last year.

The change in recording practices will see a “significant increase in numbers of those who have been assaulted”, according to John Apter, the Chairman of Hampshire Police Federation, who has been leading the push for more accurate numbers of police assaults.

“I think they’ve got to have the correct data,” said Mark Smith, Essex Police Federation Chairman. “We’ve got to be open and honest about what is happening out there, the same that we’ve got to be open and honest about cuts to policing, we need to be open and honest about assaults.

“Police officer assaults aren’t likely to go up, they’re already high, they just weren’t being recorded or reported. So the recording and reporting will go up, the officer assaults are already high, we know they’re high, we need some honesty in reporting that because it’s not right that we’re ignoring officers being assaulted.”

Mr Apter added: “The Home Office, up until now, have only ever asked forces to provide data from the Health and Safety or the HR reporting system. Now we know from research we’ve done in force probably only about 20% or 25% of actual assaults gets recorded on the Health and Safety system, so there’s a massive disparity.

“For this next set of data requirement, which is for 2015/16, the Home Office have now requested from forces the Health and Safety data, and that is mandatory as it was last year, but the difference this year is they’ve also requested, on a voluntary basis, they’ve also requested the crime data to go alongside it.”

Mr Apter said “the pressure now is on forces across England and Wales” to provide their crime data on officer assaults – whether it is voluntary or not.