There were more police operations involving firearms in Cumbria last year, new figures show.

Figures from the Home Office show armed police officers were deployed 44 times by Cumbria Constabulary in the year to March.

This was an increase from the year before when there were 38 firearms operations.

Chief Superintendent Matt Kennerley of Cumbria Police said the county remains ‘one of the safest places to live’ and that incidents that require an armed response are ‘carefully assessed and managed’

“Cumbria remains one of the safest places to live and the number of incidents in which we deploy armed officers is relatively low,” he said.

“We expect to see increases in this year’s figures compared to last year due to the restrictions placed on all of us during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The safety of the public is our absolutely priority and in order to ensure that we can achieve that, it is sometimes necessary to deploy armed officers.

“Every incident which requires an armed response is always carefully assessed and managed to ensure that we can maximise the safety of the public and our officers and staff during such incidents.”

Across England and Wales, the number of police firearms operations stayed largely the same, with 18,259 in the year to March, and 18,245 the year before.

However, it represented a drop compared to the year leading up to the coronavirus pandemic, when there were 19,393 operations.

Armed officers intentionally fired a weapon just four times nationally last year – and there has been just one year in the last decade where this number reached double figures.

Across the North West, there were 1,410 firearms operations in 2021-22, carried out by 570 weapons-trained officers.

The two largest police forces, the Met and West Midlands, accounted for a third of all operations between them.

Most police operations do not involve the use of firearms, though armed officers are deployed in certain cases such as for incidents involving violent crime or to patrol high-risk areas.

Read more: Police record hundreds of coercive behaviour offences last year

The Government has encouraged police forces to deploy 'less lethal' weapons – which aim to incapacitate suspects, rather than cause long-term harm – as a means of reducing the number of firearms it uses.

Separate Home Office figures show across the two nations there were over 34,000 incidents involving a "conducted energy device", such as a TASER, in the year to March 2021 – including 373 in Cumbria.

This was an increase of seven per cent from the year before, and more than double the 17,000 in 2017-18, when data is first available.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We’re committed to giving the police the resources they need to fight crime.

"That’s why we’ve given policing an additional £1.1bn billion this year and are recruiting 20,000 additional officers across England and Wales."