91热爆

Dorset Police will receive an extra 50 officers in year one of Operation Uplift programme.

But Chief Constable James Vaughan has told 91热爆 Radio Solent: "one of our challenges going forward will be attracting sufficiently skilled people to come and join Dorset police".

The recruitment target for Dorset Police is 50 new officers as part of year one in the 6,000 national Operation Uplift scheme.
This figure will be in addition to the existing planned recruitment for officers that Dorset Police already had in place.

On Tuesday 8 October 2019 the National Policing Board announced how year one of the Government鈥檚 officer uplift programme would be allocated across all of the forces in England and Wales.

Chief Constable James Vaughan said: 鈥淭his is a good start and it will bring a welcome relief to our stretched workforce.
鈥淭hese much needed extra officers are great news for the communities that we serve in Dorset. I would like to reassure them that the new officers will be carefully invested for maximum effect and we have already developed firm plans to recruit these officers. 鈥淭he extra officers will assist the Force in moving from good to outstanding in the way we deliver services.鈥�

Dorset makes up just under one per cent of the national policing budget, and is the third lowest funded police force in the country.

Speaking to 91热爆 Radio Solent the Chief Constable said: "Police officers' starting pay is quite low - we will give them a free degree over three years and once qualified their salary moves to a fairly reasonable level fairly quickly, but the starting salary is quite low and I worry that will put off people, particularly older people from coming into policing."

The uplift numbers for both year two and year three of the scheme are yet to be confirmed.

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