Police officers are fit, insists West Mercia Police

More than one in 20 officers in the region failed tests designed to show basic fitness.

The tests are to become mandatory this year – meaning hundreds of officers across the UK face a race against time to shape up.

But the Warwickshire Police and West Mercia Police alliance said that it would support all officers - and pointed to the fact that 94.4 per cent of officers had passed the test.

Superintendent Steve Eccleston said: "The results to date are encouraging and show the vast majority of officers tested are fit.

"Fitness trainers from Warwickshire Police and West Mercia Police are working with officers and provide training programmes to help improve fitness levels, with some excellent results.

"We are also seeing officers taking personal responsibility for improving their fitness levels, and as a result we are seeing our overall pass rate increase."

Interim results submitted by 39 forces to the College of Policing showed that 851 officers fell short nationally, with an average of three per cent failing overall in more than 30,000 tests.

After taking part in the 15-metre "bleep" shuttle run test, some 253 of the 22,078 male officers who took part - an average of one per cent - failed.

Almost 600 of 7,969 female officers, an average of eight per cent, were unsuccessful.

West Mercia Police was also labelled as among the worst in the country, with a failure rate of 5.6 per cent.