PSNI recruitment: More than 3,000 apply to join police service

Last year, Chief Constable Jon Boutcher stated policing in Northern Ireland was at a “watershed moment”, with the lowest number of officers in PSNI history.

Mr Boutcher repeated a warning that officer numbers have declined to “a dangerous and unprecedented level of 6,300 through underfunding”.

He said the recruitment campaign was “going well” and added the initial plan is to recover officer numbers to 7,000 over the next three years.

The chief constable was asked about efforts to increase interest in recruitment from a range of backgrounds.

He told board members of the 3,100 applications made by the beginning of this week, 59% were Protestant and 28% were Catholic.

Almost 7,000 people applied to join the PSNI in its 2020 recruitment drive.

About one third of those who wanted to join were from the Catholic community – 2,158 – 223 more than the previous recruitment drive in 2018.

The PSNI is under pressure to increase Catholic representation, with senior officers previously warning it could begin to slip backwards.

Sinn Féin and the SDLP had previously called for the reintroduction of a 50-50 recruitment policy, which ran for a decade until 2011.

It meant 50% of all recruits had to be from a Catholic background.