Disability, race, age, sexual orientation, gender; just some of the characteristics that traditionally were seen as barriers to becoming a police officer. This could not be further from the truth.

At Wiltshire Police, we are committed to creating a workforce that represents the communities we serve. Our positive action team works hard to ensure people from underrepresented groups can compete on level terms with everyone else.

We’re hiring more police officers now - our next campaign opens on Monday. If you are thinking of applying, but have concerns that a certain characteristic, educational qualification or past experience might hold you back, please be open and honest with us about it.

I want Wiltshire Police to be an outstanding employer of choice. That means hiring the best talent, reflecting our diverse communities.

We can achieve this by working with, and encouraging, members of underrepresented groups to apply – we particularly want to attract more women and people from black, asian and minority ethnic backgrounds to apply. There are a number of stages in the recruitment process, including mandatory awareness workshops where you will have the opportunity to have two-way honest conversations to make the process as transparent as possible.

Policing has been a big part of my life since 1993 and I would not change it for the world. At the outset I too contemplated whether policing was the right career choice for me.

I quickly learned that you need to be prepared for the reality of modern day policing - it is physical, you work shift patterns seven days a week and you never know where the next call is going to take you.

Police officer training is changing. In June our first student will be taking the new three year police constable degree apprenticeship.

This doesn’t mean you will be sat in a classroom for three years doing paperwork and reading books. After your initial 22-weeks training (plus two weeks leave), student constables start out on patrol with a tutor at week 24. By week 36, you are out on independent patrol.

I cannot stress enough that although from day one our trainees are student officers, in the eyes of the public they are fully-fledged serving police officers. The public rightly expect them to serve and protect them – the ‘student’ tag becomes immaterial.

We’re training more police officers than ever before. We have 57 in training right now - the most we have ever had – with 37 of them going out to tutorship in April and the other 20 in July. It’s really encouraging that so many people want to be police officers. They want to support their communities. They want to be a force for all.

Look out on our website for our next campaign open from 9 to 29 March - wiltshire.police.uk/Officers

If you share my passion for policing with the community, in a force that will become part of your family and get the very best out of you, look no further. We want to hear from you.