Concerned to maximize the use of their resources, police forces are examining the resource implications of abstractions from operational duty due to training. Training is fundamental to the running of any organization and development of its staff, but must be balanced against financial and opportunity costs. Good practice issues on the more efficient provision of training include standardized definitions of “abstraction” and “training” and monitoring systems capable of calculating the rate of abstraction; rigorous evaluation of training course contents and explicit statement of their purpose; evaluation of courses leading to reduction in duplicated and redundant training; using alternative “local” venues to reduce travel time and costs; alternative delivery mechanisms to make better use of time available for training; and improved evaluation of how well knowledge and skills gained from training courses transfer to the workplace and how well the results can be fed back into the continual revision of training provisions. Tables, references, glossary