Dyfed-Powys Police is among the forces to receive the fewest new recruits under a Government campaign to increase officer numbers in England and Wales, a Home Office report shows.

The police force responsible for policing Powys, Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire has a target of recruiting 42 extra officers during the first year of a three-year recruitment drive that was launched by the UK Government last year.

Boris Johnson vowed to swell the police service to more than 140,000 officers by mid-2022 if he was elected Prime Minister. Police officer numbers in England and Wales have fallen by more than 20,000 since 2009, with a reduction from 144,353 to 122,395 in 2018.

In October, the Home Office pledged to provide £750 million to support the 43 forces to recruit up to 6,000 new officers by the end of 2020/21.

Dyfed-Powys Police said the number of extra police officers they can recruit through the national uplift programme is determined by the Home Office.

“We plan extensively to ensure our workforce is up to strength and have already welcomed some of the additional officers to our team alongside our regular recruitment of officers,” a force spokeswoman said.

“We also have two transferee intakes scheduled this year, in June and September, through which we hope to welcome around 10 experienced officers from other forces”.

Due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, Dyfed-Powys Police said it will be looking to double the usual number of recruits in September to make up for a cancelled intake that was scheduled to take place in June.

“Recruits joining in 2020 have undergone initial key training to enable them to be deployed in our communities providing additional resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic”.

The three forces with the highest recruitment target for the first year are the Metropolitan Police (1,369), West Midlands (366) and Greater Manchester (347).

Other forces due to receive a big boost in their numbers this financial year include West Yorkshire (256), Merseyside (200), Northumbria (185) and Thames Valley (183).

Those to receive the lowest numbers of new recruits in the first year are Warwickshire (41), Dyfed-Powys (42) and City of London (44).