Officer training - People started training to become a Metropolitan Police Officer

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.027619

I note you seek access to the following information:

1. How many people started training to become a Metropolitan Police Officer in the last five calendar years? (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 to date)

2. How many people successfully completed training to become a Metropolitan Police Officer in the last five calendar years? (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 to date)

3. How many people have left the Metropolitan Police within 12 months of completing training? Please split the data by the number of people in the last five calendar years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 to date). Please also provide a breakdown of the reasons for leaving and the number of people that each reason applies to, per the last five calendar years listed above.

4. How much does it cost in pounds to train a Metropolitan Police Officer?

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the located information to you in full.

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

Q1 - How many people started training to become a Metropolitan Police Officer in the last five calendar years? (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 to date)

Q2 - How many people successfully completed training to become a Metropolitan Police Officer in the last five calendar years? (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 to date)

Q3 - How many people have left the Metropolitan Police within 12 months of completing training? Please split the data by the number of people in the last five calendar years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 to date). Please also provide a breakdown of the reasons for leaving and the number of people that each reason applies to, per the last five calendar years listed above.

Please find attached information pursuant to questions 1 to 3 your request above.

Q4 - How much does it cost in pounds to train a Metropolitan Police Officer?

It is difficult to provide an estimation because training cost covers all Metropolitan officer training, at all levels including new recruits, as well as existing police officers. Cost of individual training per recruit have many variables and is very much dependent on volumes in a single year, the pathway they are recruited into, number of years on training, and type of learning, etc.

Thus, training costs information is not routinely recorded and would not be available in a readily accessible format. For this reason, the Information Commissioner’s Office guidance on determining whether information is held for the purpose of the Act is relevant in this case. This is because, in order to locate and extract this breakdown is not simply a case of extracting the relevant information (the individual building blocks). Therefore, information concerning the cost to train a Metropolitan Police Officer is not held by the MPS.