Andrew Dismore

Andrew Dismore AM, Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Hendon and London Assembly member for Barnet and Camden challenged Mayor Boris Johnson over Barnet Police’s poor attendance times  at Mayor’s Question Time.  (Video: https://vimeo.com/106411885 )

After MQT Mr Dismore said:

“At July’s MQT I raised this with the Mayor.

“For ‘I’ calls in Barnet, the target is supposed to be 15 minutes.  In March, April and May they were averaging against that target around 89%.  The longest call – and this is supposed to be 15 minutes – was 79 minutes in March due to ‘heavy demand’, 60 minutes in April and over 100 minutes in May to attend an emergency call . The police are supposed to be there in 15 minutes.  For ‘S’ calls, when they are supposed to be there in 60 minutes, the performance against the target for March, April and May was less than 88% on average.  Again, the longest calls were in March over 4,000 minutes, April over 4,000 minutes and May over 2,700 minutes. 

“The Mayor then said:

‘The times that you have mentioned are unacceptable and I will undertake to write to the Member to try to give him a full answer as to what we think is going on in the answering of emergency calls in Barnet.’

“Regrettably he did not write to me , so I had to ask him about it again at this week’s MQT , as the position has deteriorated since then, with I calls down to 87.1% and S calls 83.3% against target in August.  Over the calendar year, the trend has been  consistently  downwards.

“Whilst average times may be within the target, that is  little comfort to the 13% of people  who called the police with a real and pressing  emergency and who do not get the rapid response they are entitled to- and to wait an hour and a half is clearly unacceptable.

“The Mayor’s response at this week’s MQT was unacceptable and complacent.

the problem is not the police themselves, who are working hard to meet the targets locally. The problem is that there are just not enough of them in Barnet.  We have lost dozens of officers and PCSO’s since the Conservatives came to power in May 2010:

	May 2010	Latest Figs	No. Decline	% Decline
Police Officers	607	547	61	10%
PCSOs	172	88	84	49%

“So much for the oft repeated promise of Hendon’s Conservative MP at the last election, that he would provide more police in Barnet- he has delivered the exact opposite.

“It is time that the Mayor recognised that Barnet needs more police than he says he will provide, if the people of Barnet are to get the police emergency response to which they are entitled like the rest of London and for which they pay through their council tax.”