Chief Constable Jon Boutcher has said 3,100 people have applied to become police officers since the start of the latest recruitment campaign.

He told the Policing Board that people had applied from “all over Northern Ireland” since applications opened on 22 January.

The new campaign, which closes on 12 February, is the first significant drive to recruit trainees since 2021.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) launched the recruitment campaign last month, aiming to lift numbers from an all-time low.

Last year, Chief Constable Jon Boutcher stated policing in Northern Ireland was at a “watershed moment”, with the lowest number of officers in PSNI history.

Mr Boutcher repeated a warning that officer numbers have declined to “a dangerous and unprecedented level of 6,300 through underfunding”.

He said the recruitment campaign was “going well” and added the initial plan is to recover officer numbers to 7,000 over the next three years.

The chief constable was asked about efforts to increase interest in recruitment from a range of backgrounds.

He told board members of the 3,100 applications made by the beginning of this week, 59% were Protestant and 28% were Catholic.

Almost 7,000 people applied to join the PSNI in its 2020 recruitment drive.

About one third of those who wanted to join were from the Catholic community – 2,158 – 223 more than the previous recruitment drive in 2018.

The PSNI is under pressure to increase Catholic representation, with senior officers previously warning it could begin to slip backwards.

Sinn Féin and the SDLP had previously called for the reintroduction of a 50-50 recruitment policy, which ran for a decade until 2011.

It meant 50% of all recruits had to be from a Catholic background.

The PSNI was allocated an additional £37m funding last November, to address its immediate budget problems.

On Thursday, the chief constable said “the issue of finance remains a critical one” and that the PSNI “will have to find a way to pay for the recruitment of officers and staff.”

“The additional cost to recover our workforce levels is around £200m over the next five years.”

“As the board knows, I continually set out the consequences of the organisation not being able to keep people safe, due to our significantly reduced and dangerously low workforce numbers.”

“This campaign is a hugely positive development and the actual recruitment cannot come soon enough.”

Recruits will be offered a starting salary of £34,000, which includes a £4,000 allowance commonly referred to as “danger money”.