Officer Recruitment (1157A/23)
Request
West Midlands Police has run a recruitment campaign which was posted on Twitter with the following statement:
‘The PCC’s office announced that we’re going to be recruiting 1,000 black, Asian, and minority ethnic officers over the next 3 years.’
The advertisement featured a Sikh constable.
My FOI request, now that the campaign is near conclusion, is please can you provide me with the following:
a) The guidance provided to the recruitment team as to which ethnicities do or do not qualify as ‘minority ethnic’. E.g. was minority ethnic inclusive of white Scottish, Irish, Welsh, or other European people who were not white English? Specifically, who was included and who excluded?
b) The guidance to the recruitment team of how the figure of a minimum 1,000 was to be achieved to filter out those deemed as not eligible.
c) The statistics for placements under this scheme to-date.
Response
a) The detail of which ethnicities is in line with national standards and Census reporting, so all White ethnicities are excluded from the numbers regardless of background. To do otherwise would prevent comparative reporting against national policing or population statistics.
No guidance was issued to the recruitment team as such, the monitoring comes from our HR system using the ethnicity that the individual entered into the recruitment system when applying. As per best practice, recruitment staff do not see that detail as part of recruitment to prevent any bias.
b) As above there was no guidance issued to recruitment as the data is purely taken from details of those individuals who actually started as Police Officers.
c) In agreement with the office of the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), the target date was extended to 31st March 2025. To date, there have been 518 Ethnic Minority officers recruited.
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