´óÏó´«Ã½

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is to freeze officer recruitment due to "sustained budgetary pressures".

A batch of new recruits due to begin training in October will be the last taken on in this financial year.

Applicants who were affected by the decision to halt the recruitment process have been informed.

The police service, which has 6,800 officers, recruited more student officers than expected this year.

But chief operating officer Pamela McCreedy said it would not be in a position to make any more appointments in 2022-23.

"Regrettably, we anticipate that our budgetary position will have an impact on our service delivery to the communities we serve," she said.

"We continue to assess how best to maximise our resources against operational risks and priorities."

Ms McCreedy said the Policing Board, which oversees the PSNI, was briefed about the matter on Thursday.

Policing board chairman Doug Garrett said there were "mounting financial pressures facing the service with the size of the funding gap at the start of this financial year sitting at £59m, and growing to £90m, including through increased utility costs".

He said the board had discussed at length with PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne "the potential impacts of reduced numbers" and that Mr Byrne had advised that a more detailed assessment would be shared "for full discussion".

Mr Garrett said the board had written to the justice minister in "support of the chief constable's concerns" and called for "clarity on the policing budget and the need for an improved financial settlement for policing".

A Department of Justice spokesperson said the "recruitment of police officers is ultimately an operational matter for the chief constable who is accountable to the Northern Ireland Policing Board".

"The minister is committed to respecting his operational independence and the role of the policing board," the department added.

Policing Board member Mike Nesbitt said the situation was verging on a crisis and could have a detrimental effect whole police units.

"What we were told last week by the chief operating officer is that we can't just skim," he told ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Ulster's The Nolan Show.

"In other words, if you have 10 constables you can't cut it to nine or eight - you are going to take out actual units."

Mr Nesbitt added that, while the aim has been to increase police numbers to at least 7,500 as suggested under Patten reforms, the freeze on recruitment would put officer numbers "on a trajectory towards 6,000".

"It's going to get potentially worse," he said.

"If you stop recruiting, your numbers don't stay steady - they drop because officers retire and move on."

Police Federation for Northern Ireland chairman Liam Kelly said a reduction to about 6,000 officers would be "unsustainable, unrealistic and dangerous".

"The pressures officers are enduring right now are intolerable and expecting them to do more with less is a recipe for service-wide breakdown in the work we do on behalf of our communities," he added.

"Increasingly, we are first responders to incidents where ambulance delays are excessive and that means we are taking officers off other essential duties to deal with emergency, often life-threatening situations."

He said budgets needed to be addressed "as a matter of urgency".

"Our politicians owe it to the people who vote for them, and who rely on the services officers provide, to sort out this situation if we're to avert a full-blown crisis."