Sussex Police among most inclusive forces in the country

New figures show police officers who identify as gay or lesbian make up almost 10 per cent of the police force.

Staffing figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act found Sussex Police was the most inclusive om the country.

A total of 1,864 officers are recorded as heterosexual, equating to 89.1 per cent of the workforce where sexuality is recorded.

Sussex Police car in special pride livery

There are 151 gay or lesbian officers (7.2 per cent), 71 bisexual officers (3.4 per cent) and six who are described as “other” (0.3 per cent).

The force also included data that showed six officers identified as trans and one as non-binary.

However, elsewhere in the country, police officers who identify as gay or lesbian make up less than 3 per cent of the workforce in some constabularies.

Chief Inspector Lee Broadstock, co-chairman of the LGBT+ network representing gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans officers across the country, said: “If we’re not representative of our communities then we don’t understand that community.

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“There needs to be an understanding of what the communities need to give people an equitable police service.”

The percentage of officers in each force identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual and straight was calculated by PA only where constabularies had data for at least half of its officers.

This equated to 26 out of 40 forces which replied to FOI requests.

While heavily caveated, the data indicates wide discrepancies in the number of LGB officers in each police force.

The highest percentage of officers identifying as gay or lesbian, of the 26 forces with relevant information, was in Sussex (7.2 per cent), followed by Humberside (6.2 per cent) and Hertfordshire (5.8 per cent).