How to recruit 3,000 Specials

Established in 1831 as a part time volunteer police force, the Special Constabulary plays a unique and important part in policing, and their contribution cannot be underestimated. A report by the Police Foundation estimates the millions of hours delivered by this volunteer force saves policing around £85-90m a year.

Earlier this year, the Government announced that an additional 3,000 special constables will be recruited as part of its Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee. This is in addition to 3,000 more police officers and 4,000 PCSOs with 3,000 current police officers redeployed to neighbourhood teams.

It’s a tall order. At its peak, in March 2012, there were 20,343 special constables, but over the last decade that number has declined rapidly. Latest figures from March 2025 reveal that the number currently stands at 5,534 which means forces will need to increase the Special Constabulary by 60 per cent to meet their targets.

Realtime data from All Police Jobs reveals that the situation remains bleak.

All Police Jobs measure traffic to its site, alongside click rates that take a candidate to the application page. Our data shows that between October 2021 and October 2024, interest in applying to become a Special was low, compared to other roles, but remained relatively stable. Each year, 20,000 adverts for special constable were clicked on to read, with around 20 percent of people then clicking through to start or at least view the application process

However, according to our latest figures, that has changed markedly in the last 12 months.

For the period October 2024 to October 2025, the click through rate has dropped to just 5 percent of potential candidates, even though the numbers clicking to view adverts has remained the same. Given forces have just two years to recruit 3,000 Specials, this is a worrying development.

Fortunately, there is a solution. We’ve been working with a number of forces to boost their Special Constabulary recruitment adverts, getting them in front of the right people with targeted advertising. Where a force was receiving an average of 10 click throughs a week, this increased to over 70. In a two week period, 150 people who would not have otherwise seen the Specials advert clicked to view the role.

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