POLICE chiefs want to renegotiate targets for the number of black and Asian recruits because forces cannot meet the Government’s deadline.

Under figures that were set out by the Home Office after the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, 7.7 per cent of the 150,000 officers in England and Wales are meant to be drawn from ethnic minority backgrounds by 2009.

All 43 forces in England and Wales were told that their workforces had to mirror the percentage of the working population in their area aged 18-54 from ethnic minorities.

Some rural forces were given such small targets that they were able to meet them almost immediately, but forces such as the Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police are having difficulty.

Senior officers in Scotland Yard admit that it is almost impossible to reach their target figure of 25.9 per cent of the 30,000-strong force being from minority ethnic communities in the next four years.

The Association of Chief Police Officers is negotiating with the Home Office to change the basis of the figures. Instead of being measured on the overall profile of their forces, chief constables want targets to be based on their recruiting figures.

Yesterday Martin Tiplady, the director of human resources at Scotland Yard, told The Times: “We have not got a hope in hell of getting to 25 per cent by 2009. It would be better to look at how we get targets in recruitment.”

However, Mr Tiplady, who is also a national spokesman on human resources for the association, said that the Metropolitan Police has made dramatic progress in the past three years, doubling the number of black and Asian officers to 7 per cent.

Mr Tiplady said that in the past 12 months Scotland Yard had recruited 17 per cent of new officers from ethnic minority communities but this added only 0.5 per cent to the manpower profile. In 2005-06 the force wants to recruit 27 per cent from ethnic minority communities, but even such a huge rise would not take the proportion of the workforce from ethnic minorities above 7.7 per cent.

Scotland Yard has held recruiting fairs in areas with large numbers of black or Asian residents, and black and Asian officers have been encouraged to act as mentors and recruiters. There have been so many applicants that the force has not advertised for 15 months and has a waiting list of recruits awaiting training.

Yesterday Ray Powell, the president of the National Black Police Association, said he was concerned that if the targets were made easier to attain, the drive to recruit more officers from ethnic minorities would “go off the boil and not be a priority”.

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