Essex Police has 175 fewer officers than a year ago

ESSEX Police has lost 175 officers in the past year, new figures show.

There were 2,894 officers in the force as at 31 March 2016, compared to 3,069 on the same date the previous year.

In 2010, there were 3,606 police officers in Essex – 712 more than the current number.

The police workforce statistics, published by the Home Office on 21 July, showed that there are now 124,066 police officers in England and Wales – 2,752 fewer than the previous year.

In 2009 there were 144,353 police officers in England and Wales. There are now 20,287 fewer.

The statistics also showed that 4,735 officers joined the 43 police forces in England and Wales in 2015/16, accounting for 3.8% of all officers.

This represented a fall from the previous two years.

The proportion of officers leaving the police, excluding transfers, in 2015/16 was 5.5%, higher than the previous year and continuing the upward trend seen since 2009/10.

5.9% of all officers were Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) as at 31 March 2016, a higher proportion than any of the previous ten years. 12.1% of joiners were BME, compared with 4.4% of leavers.

28.6% of all officers were female, again the highest proportion in the last ten years. 31.2% of joiners were female, while 22.8% of leavers were.