HC Deb 14 May 1992 vol 207 c202W
25. Sir Fergus Montgomery

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many specials his Department recruited in the first quarter of the current year.

Mr. Charles Wardle

Special constables are recruited locally by police forces. Recruitment figures are collected annually and are not available for the period requested. I understand that nearly 1,000 applications to join the special constabulary were received in the first three months of this year. There was an overall rise in numbers of special constables during 1991 of nearly 2,200, to a total of just over 18,000.