Sir Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, today warned the London Policing Board that the force in the capital is facing significant staffing cuts in order to balance its books.
Under pressure: the Met could be forced to cut 7% of its front-line officers next year
Sir Mark said he could be forced to cut 2,300 officers and 400 staff next year because of a funding shortfall of £450million – a cut of 7% of officers and 3.5% of backroom, civilian staff.
Such cuts will have “a seriously detrimental impact” on the Met, which currently employs 33,473 officers and 11,178 staff.
With the Met having sold off huge swathes of property, including police stations, across the capital in previous rounds of cut-backs when Boris Johnson was Mayor of London, Sir Mark said there is little left to sell and the use of reserves “is no longer possible”.
Expectations had been that the Met should be increasing its number of officers.
Speaking at a City Hall meeting chaired by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan this morning, Sir Mark warned that the cuts will affect tackling serious violence and organised crime by the Flying Squad, its dogs unit and its mounted branch, and could be made as soon as January.
He said the financial pressures “are a cumulative impact of a decade or more” rather than this year’s budget.
Warning: Sir Mark Rowley
Sir Mark said the projections are based on planning assumptions that will change until the final settlement is decided by City Hall early next year. He said they cannot wait any longer “or it will not be possible to achieve the reductions without uncontrolled consequences”.
He added that they will try to avoid redundancies “but can’t guarantee we’ll avoid them entirely”.
The Met also employs 1,486 police community support officers and 1,177 special constables.
Policing numbers, particularly in Croydon, have been badly impacted by the demands of policing the capital, with regular, large demonstrations, state occasions, even major sports events, seeing officers deployed out of their usual service area – something referred to as “abstractions”.
Croydon is often expected to provide more than its fair share of officers for these other necessary duties, leaving the borough itself noticeably under-staffed. As first reported here, Croydon often has to provide one-quarter of its officers to these other duties.
Official figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that even with existing staffing numbers, the Metropolitan Police is solving just 1-in-5 burglary cases in Croydon.
Read more: CronxWatch returns asking: ‘Where are Croydon’s police?’
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
There isn’t enough Police as it is , it’s not safe for them or for the public, this is so not fair on so many levels.
Croydon need more Police not less. The amount of lawlessness is increasing all the time and there seems to be no effective deterrent. The Police are overworked as it is. Did the Government promise more police? I think that they did.
Less Police service will see this Country going further down the pan and criminality on the rise.