Scottish Labour’s Pauline McNeill urged the SNP to reverse this trend as soon as possible before burn out creates a “snowball effect”. 

The number of officers who left Police Scotland for education, other employment or personal reasons has surged by 49 per cent between 2019 and 2023, according to data obtained by Scottish Labour FOIs.

In 2023, the last year with full data, 846 police officers quit Police Scotland altogether due to career, personal, or retirement reasons.

Police officers can serve for 30 years before retiring, but on average police retire nine years earlier than required.

Nearly half of police officers stated they would not have chosen policing as a career had they known how demanding and resource-constrained it was, according to recent research by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research.

Scottish Labour’s justice spokesperson Pauline McNeill said: “These damning statistics are a glimpse into the tumbling morale among police officers after years of SNP cuts and a failure to provide police officer with the proper tools such as body-worn cameras.

“Policing will always be demanding, but it’s made harder when officers are expected to deliver the same level of reassurance to the public with far fewer resources.

“If more police burn out, the result could be a snowball effect where those left behind are even more stressed — the SNP must act now to reverse this trend.

“Scottish Labour will prioritise more community police officers, upgrade equipment and improve co-ordination between emergency services to ensure the best use is being made of police officers’ time.”