The force has now already completed its recruitment drive for this year. A total of 107 officers were pledged as part of national uplift. A further 40 were delivered through the 2020/21 budget. Many of these have already completed their initial training and are working on the frontline.

There are now plans to recruit a further 150 officer by March 2021, bringing the total number of additional officers to almost 300. The second wave of recruitment will commence next month.

Chief Constable Craig Guildford addressed the new recruits at West Bridgford station on Friday (27 March).

He said: “The additional numbers will bolster my hard-working officers and staff who have continued to do a brilliant job despite the challenges we are currently facing.

“We are ahead of the national curve on recruitment of additional officers and it is great to be in this position, especially at this current time so that we can support our officers on the front line as they patrol the streets encouraging people to stay indoors to save lives.”

CC Guildford went on to say: “In order to support this critical piece of work we have changed some of our training so we can have this solid reserve of officers ready to be deployed where we need them. This will help us with the work we are doing to help stop the spread of Coronavirus.

“They will be given self-defence and first aid training and we’ll have them out with our patrols as quickly as we can. The recruitment team and training staff have done a great job in very challenging circumstances.”

Nottinghamshire Police is going ahead with its recruitment programme despite the Covid-19 outbreak. The force said "this could be a life-line to those who may have just been laid off from other careers due to the pandemic". The recruitment events are being done online instead of face-to-face. 

Most of the new officers will be deployed in neighbourhood policing roles. The remainder will go into public protection, crime investigation, cybercrime and fraud plus additional knife crime and robbery team officers.