THE Chairman of Hampshire Police Federation has called on Prime Minister Boris joins to follow up his words with actions after his vow to recruit 20,000 more police officers in the next three years.

According to Alex Charge, the government should return the 1,000 police officers in Hampshire who were dropped due to budget cuts, and said that 20,000 new recruits in the UK would “put us back where we were in 2009”.

This comes after England and Wales police forces lost more than 22,000 police officers from 2009 to 2017, he said..

The announcement by newly-elected Mr Johnson will be overseen by a new national policing board.

Mr Charge said: “It is a really positive and good challenge, but it’s not as simple as that, as after government cuts our training capacity has shrunk, so it is also about having enough space for these officers.

“It’s really key that we’re honest with the public, which is fundamental - and where is the money coming from?”

He added: “I hope we do get the 20,000 officers and this will be key to maintaining a trusting relationship with the government - we have been telling them we need more resources and now they appear to have listened but we need to hold them to account for the delivery of this promise. Words are cheap and we need actions to follow up the promise.”

He said: “When public taxes go up, people deserve to get more for their money and see an improvement in the police.

“It’s a good start but we need more [officers] to provide the quality service that all officers join the police to provide.”

Cabinet Member for Healthier Safer Cities and Southampton city councillor Dave Shields said: “It would probably take five years to recruit that number of police officers and there would be nowhere to put them.

"So can we trust the guy, where is the money coming from, where are the police going to be placed and why were they cut from the force in the first place?

“People living in Portsmouth and Southampton are experiencing 40 percent of all crime, so it would only be right for us to get 40% of the police officers - in February we were promised 210 officers if we increased the council tax preset specifically for police by 14.25 percent but only 80 percent of police officers have been recruited.”

North West Hampshire MP Kit Malthouse has become policing minister - making him responsible for overseeing the 20,000 extra officers.