Reform of the Met will be “more limited” and slower than it should be because of a huge budget shortfall and officer shortages compounded by the demands of policing the Gaza protests and other major events, Sir Mark Rowley warned on Tuesday.
The Met Commissioner said other problems included a huge number of crimes of violence against women and girls that was beyond the capacity of police and the justice system to deal with, as well as “high volume” offences such as robbery, burglary and theft that were also outstripping his force’s resources.
He said at the same time, the Met was being hit with a fall in officer numbers, which were expected to plunge by another 1,250 over the coming year, and a budget shortfall which required savings of £400 million by 2026.
Sir Mark said the result was that his “New Met for London” blueprint for transforming his force in response to the damning report by Baroness Louise Casey and a series of scandals would have to be scaled back and slowed down.
He added that there would also have to be “significant operational service cuts” unless additional investment was provided.
The Commissioner’s bleak assessment came in a report to City Hall’s London Policing Board ahead of a meeting today convened to hear an update from Sir Mark about the progress of his reform plan.
He has repeatedly emphasised his determination to restore his force’s reputation, but told today’s meeting that his “candid and honest assessment” was that his ambitious overhaul could not be delivered as swiftly as intended.
“Reduced resource and available workforce creates a need to prioritise and limit.. reform,” Sir Mark said, adding that those changes that would be delivered would “be more limited and partial than the scale of reform that is needed.”
Sir Mark said the problems included a lack of officers with the Met’s current total of 34,000 already 1,400 below a Home Office uplift target and forecast to drop by another 1,250 by the end of March next year.
He said the recruitment problems were the result of cost of living pressures that were affecting London more than other parts of the country and having a similar impact in other public services.
The result, he said, was that by next year the capital was expected to have 310 police officers per 100,000 Londoners – 40 fewer than in March 2012 – with the situation expected to worsen rather than improve.
Other “strategic challenges” included having insufficient officers to tackle the “high volume” of robberies, burglaries, thefts and incidents of criminal damage and the “extraordinary and unprecedented operational demand and complexity” that his force was facing.
He said this was forcing the Met to remove police from neighbourhood duties to deal with pro-Palestinian and other protests, as well as football matches and other major events.
Further burdens included rising fraud, which he said was affecting London in particular.
Sir Mark said a further problem was that officers’ confidence had been eroded by a fear of “unbalanced public commentary and legal accountability”, resulting in a drop in “proactive arrests”, as well as fewer stop and searches.
He said there had also been a 23 per cent decline in the use of force by officers over the two years up to last December which, although partially the result of improved training on “de-escalation”, also indicated that police were sometimes afraid to act when they should in a trend that was putting the public and colleagues at risk.
On funding, the Commissioner cited figures showing that the Met received far less funding than police in comparable cities such as New York and Sydney, which he said both received 50 per cent more, and also fared poorly in comparison to other large cities in the UK.
He said the budgetary challenge faced by his force had been increased by the rapid rise in London’s population over recent years, combined with a real terms reduction in its funding, and that “400 million of savings” would be needed by the financial year ending in March 2026 under current estimates.
