Roads policing officers repeatedly exposed to trauma

Roads policing officers are being repeatedly exposed to trauma with too few colleagues to share the burden, the Leicestershire Police Federation has warned.

Andy Spence, Chair of Leicestershire Police Federation, said cuts have left traffic officers attending serious and fatal collisions almost daily while struggling to take leave or access training.

“We have on average two to three officers on shift policing some of our major road networks every day. So that is two or three police officers at work for 12 hours each day policing the M1, the A42, the A1 - and all the other main country roads along some of Britain's busiest motorways. 

“When there is a serious injury or an accident or a death, then those are the officers who go to it and they are being exposed routinely to all this trauma day in, day out,” he said. 

Andy called for more investment in roads policing, adding that where the force deals with a serious injury, assault or a murder, far more detectives are made available. Andy was speaking as new figures were published showing a 22% drop in officers on the roads over the past decade. 

At the end of March 2025 there were 3,889 officers working in roads policing units across England and Wales, a drop of 22 percent compared with ten years earlier.

Andy warned that unless the decline is addressed, both officer welfare and public safety will suffer. 

“The risk is that the public are going to be exposed to more danger, there is going to be more and more lawlessness on the roads, and there will not be enough police officers that are there to deal with it. And the police officers that are there to deal with it are facing burnout. Because if they can't get the leave, if they're being abstracted for all the other things, then something has to give at some point.”

Andy said the priority must be rebuilding numbers on the roads. 

“The best solution is to provide more police officers full stop. We are massively short of police officers. And one of the priorities has to be road safety,” he added their lives were distributed to the congregation.