Policing Update, October and November

Unsurprisingly, this has been dominating the news over the last few weeks, with the Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan Howe, expecting cuts of a further £800 million on top of the £600 million so far to be announced in the Chancellor’s Autumn statement later this month. Sir Bernard has stated publically this could mean between 5,000 and 8,000 officers being cut, as well as all the other options I have reported to you before. See also this letter on the future of PCSOs. After pressure from us, The decision on PCSO cuts is deferred to next month .  

The Government have also had a ‘consultation’ on the police funding formula nationally , which looked likely to disadvantage London by £185 million on top of the cuts above. They now accept the methodology was flawed, and are rejigging it, but the outcome remains uncertain. This would mean a total of almost £1 billion in additional cuts.

The implications were the main topic of our questions our last Police and Crime Committee (PCC) meeting: you may like to read the transcript– lengthy, but quite chilling.

We also still have the problem of officers being deployed out of borough (abstracted) to other areas of London.

At Mayor’s questions , I raised the proposal from some Hampstead residents for Police crowd funding Hampstead residents to ‘crowd fund’ extra police for their area. ( video link) See also  my letter to the Telegraph on this.

I issued a press release on recent Islampohobic incidents , which I can’t now link to you for legal reasons, as the alleged perpetrator’s case is now before the courts. During the Assembly plenary I spoke on the continuing issues of antiSemtism.

With the PCC, I visited the Met. Police firearms training school, particularly to look at the problems of fire arms officers wearing police body cameras. I accept there are some practical issues, but they recognise the need for this and are working for a solution.

I have raised a series of written questions a on policing, the answers to which are here and here .

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