This audit followed the discovery in April 2025 that discretion had been applied to some applicants who failed the Physical Appraisal Test (PAT) but were accepted into training at the Royal New Zealand Police College (RNZPC).

In the interests of transparency and to assess the full extent to which discretion was being used, the audit was expanded to include all other pre-employment testing over the same time period.

For the audit Police looked at 1022 recruits from 14 wings which started training between January 2024 and April 2025.

• Read the final report (PDF 270KB)

Preliminary findings release