Number of Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) Police Officers in Scotland at the end of each respective quarter.
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Entire dataset
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The first publication of police officer quarterly strength statistics as Official Statistics was on 2 December 2008. Prior to this publication, figures were collated by the Scottish Government and released through responses to Parliamentary Questions and by depositing the figures in the Scottish Parliamentary Library.
The Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 created Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), which came into being on 1 April 2013. The statistics in this release are based upon quarterly returns made by Police Scotland to the Scottish Government, and is a by-product of administrative processes, generated directly from the HR systems. The published police officer figures are sourced from Police Scotland’s personnel records and as such the quality and reliability is good.
Police Scotland complete regular quality assurance checks of their HR systems. Each business area, has a responsibility to review the quality of data they enter and hold on the HR and Duty Management System. Data anomaly checks are carried out centrally, this is done using both manual investigation and automated scripting. These checks use data field value comparisons to establish inconsistencies. The frequency of these checks are predominantly monthly, quarterly, or on demand. When anomalies are established, they are reported to the relevant business area for investigation and rectification.
Police Scotland Resource Planning & Co-ordination provide quality assurance of the HR and Duty Management System data relating to both staff and officers. Internal manuals of guidance have been developed for both staff and officers, providing instruction and process for the completion of quality assurance tasks on a weekly basis. This allows the provision of management information at an executive level of the Force and external reporting of statistics to the Scottish Government.
Figures include all police officers appointed by the Chief Constable of Police Scotland and senior police officers appointed by the Scottish Police Authority, excluding those on career breaks. Deployment of police officers is a matter for the Chief Constable of Police Scotland.
The following definitions apply to Police Officers in Scotland - includes all officers deployed with the 14 local policing divisions, specialist and operational support, central functions, officers undertaking Scottish Police College training, long-term sick leave and maternity/adoption leave, officers at ports and airports paid either wholly or partially by the port/airport authority, and additional officers either wholly or partially funded by the local authority or an external body, and all officers otherwise seconded to Scottish Government, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland (HMICS), Scottish Police Authority and elsewhere.
These figures do not include police officers employed in Scotland by the British Transport Police, Ministry of Defence Police or the Civil Nuclear Constabulary.
Police Scotland publish a geographical break down of police officers on their website
Further information on Crime and Justice statistics within Scotland can be accessed on the Scottish Government site
This is a linked data resource: it has a permanent unique uri at which both humans and machines can find it on the Internet, and which can be used an identifier in queries on our SPARQL endpoint.
A linked data-orientated view of dimensions and values
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Reference Area
http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/dimension#refArea
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Reference Period
http://purl.org/linked-data/sdmx/2009/dimension#refPeriod
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(not locked to a value) |
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Measure Type
http://purl.org/linked-data/cube#measureType
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(not locked to a value) |
Linked Data is stored in graphs. We keep dataset contents (the data) separately from the metadata, to make it easier for you to find exactly what you need.
The data in this dataset are stored in the graph: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/police-officer-quarterly-strength
The data structure definition for this data cube dataset is stored in the same graph as the data: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/police-officer-quarterly-strength
All other metadata about this dataset are stored in the graph: http://statistics.gov.scot/graph/police-officer-quarterly-strength/metadata
A breakdown by type of the 54 resources in this dataset's data graph.
| Resource type | Number of resources |
|---|---|
| Collection | 2 |
| Component specification | 5 |
| Data set | 1 |
| Data structure definition | 1 |
| Observation | 45 |
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