Police officer quarterly strength statistics: 31 March 2025
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 16,553 full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers in Scotland on 31 March 2025
- police officer numbers increased by 45 FTE officers (+0.3%) in the last quarter from 31 December 2024
- police officer numbers increased by 197 FTE officers (+1.2%) in the last year from 31 March 2024
- this is an increase of 319 FTE police officers (+2.0%) from the 16,234 FTE police officers recorded at 31 March 2007
Police officer numbers have increased in each of the last three quarters to their highest figure since Q3 of 2023
Chart 1: Total number of Police Officers (Full-time Equivalent) in Scotland, 2007-25
Chart 1 shows the total number of police officers (full-time equivalent) in Scotland between Q1 2007 and Q1 2025. The number of FTE police officers have been on a downward trend since Q2 2021 but have increased in Q1 2025 (16,553) when compared to the previous quarter (16,507).
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, 30 June 2025, will be published on Tuesday 5 August 2025.
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.
