Police Officer Quarterly Strength Statistics: 31 December 2023

Statistics on police officer quarterly strength, which gives the number of full-time-equivalent police officers employed by Police Scotland.


Scotland's Chief Statistician has published statistics on Police Officer Quarterly Strength, which gives the number of full-time equivalent police officers employed by Police Scotland.

The key findings of the statistics are:

  • there were 16,363 full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers in Scotland on 31 December 2023
  • police officer numbers decreased by 250 FTE officers (-1.5%) in the last quarter from 30 September 2023
  • police officer numbers decreased by 282 FTE officers (-1.7%) in the last year from 31 December 2022
  • this is an increase of 129 FTE police officers (+0.8%) from the 16,234 FTE police officers recorded at 31 March 2007

Police officer numbers have decreased significantly in the last quarter

Chart 1: Total number of Police Officers (Full-time Equivalent) in Scotland, 2007-23

Shows the number of full-time equivalent police officers employed since 2007. They increased from 16,234 in Q1 of 2007 to 17,278 in Q2 2009. Officer numbers were then relatively stable for a period remaining above 17,100 between Q2 of 2009 and Q4 of 2021. After which they decreased to 16,610 in Q2 of 2022 then remained at around 16,600 between Q2 of 2022 and Q3 of 2023, but have now decreased to 16,363 in Q4 of 2023.

The statistics in this release are based upon quarterly returns made by Police Scotland to the Scottish Government, and are a by-product of live administrative processes, generated directly from the HR systems. The data return provides a snapshot of police strength at the end of the quarter. The published police officer figures are sourced from Police Scotland's personnel records and as such the quality and reliability is good.

The next edition in the series, Police Officer Quarterly Strength Scotland, 31 March 2024, will be published on Tuesday 7 May 2024.

Police Scotland publish Management Information which includes sub-national breakdown of officers and police staff by division.

The publication file (.xlsx) is available to download below.

Police officer quarterly strength statistics: 31 December 2023
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