Reference: FOI-2024-1881

You asked

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I would like to request the following information:

  1. A copy of the data for the current amount of Trading Standard Officers, Police Officers, Court Official and Tobacco Enforcement Officers from 2013 to 2023. I am requesting for a UK total figure and a figure referring to England alone.
  2. I am also requesting information for the number of how many successful prosecutions there have been in the last five years since the Tobacco Products Directive came into force in May 2016. Once again I am requesting for a UK total figure and a figure referring to England alone.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.  

We hold some data by occupation available on the NOMIS webservice, accessible here: Employment by occupation. This provides figures for the number of police officers, but unfortunately does not have the other levels of detail requested, such as court official and tobacco enforcement officer.

National Trading Standards may be able to help on the number of Trading Standards officers and tobacco enforcement officers for England and Wales. Please see their website for more information and their contact details. 

For Northern Ireland and Scotland, please see the following pages:

HM Courts and Tribunal may be able to help with the number of court officials for England and Wales. Please see their website for more details.

Similarly information for Scotland and Northern Ireland can be found via the following links:

The Home Office are responsible for publishing policing statistics, which includes police workforce numbers. If you have any queries regarding these data, the Home Office can be contacted at CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gov.uk 

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) publish Statistics each quarter which may be of help and you might be able to gain some of the information regarding prosecutions by using the MoJ's Outcomes by Offence data tool, which can be filtered by various categories.  

Should you need any additional assistance or any queries regarding their data, the MoJ can be contacted via ESD@justice.gov.uk 

The Ministry of justice and the Home Office only publish data for England and Wales. The Police Service for Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency are responsible for publishing crime statistics for Northern Ireland.