According to total jobs there are, today, 842 unfilled police vacancies within 30 miles of London ... if what you say is true .. "There are many young people who are suitable for those roles, and all they need is the vacancies to be available for them to be encouraged to join." there would be no vacancies.
Not wanting to pick a fight in any way, but there is a reality that is missed by a lot of commentators .. it is not possible to click ones fingers and produce suitable, qualified, people for most jobs/trades simply because you wish it to be so.... or because it makes a nice political sound bite.
That is down to a) the police are now recruiting based on some extra funding they are receiving / going to receive from the Government b) the pressures on the police 'out there now', are immense; they are very demorilised and have felt let down for some time, with many deciding to call it a day causing even further shortages that place even more pressure on those left. Illness and mental illness has had it's effects.
That is why there are vacancies, and will be until far more support, and funds to recruit, is given.
Lets hope HMG fork out an additional 20% in funding, cos that`s the percentage increase thet some folks will be paying in this years council tax
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-47625966
Yes, in Kent we are already
All for it to get the numbers of police we need on the streets and start to address the pressures the officer faces on the street; I constantly see their frustration of not being able to achieve what the public demand them to achieve. As hotel21 states so often, at least in Kent, officers, single crewed, can be 'down', requiring immediate assistance but the nearest fellow officer is on the other side of the county and even with blue's and two's will take all too long to get there. Answering 999's is also not good, with officers and the control room having to choose priorities. Two hour response times are not unusual, and although much work has been done to improve that and the 101 service, it is still not at the level that satisfies the public AND senior police officers. Without the extra 20,000 officers 21st century policing in the UK will never be at satisfactory levels, hence the increase in violent crime. The crims just know that the chances of the police arriving quickly at the incident they have caused is very slim.
So, yes I am happy to pay extra out of my pensions for the extra officers and if it takes initiatives of the likes of our Kent Crime and Police Commissioner, Matthew Scott, to fund (200 additional officers so far) some of the extra needed by way of Council Tax, then so be it.