Londoners short-changed by Government’s Safer Streets Fund

London received up to four times less funding from the Government’s Safer Streets scheme than smaller areas of the country with lower amounts of crime, according to Home Office figures. London Assembly Member, Andrew Dismore AM, said that the capital is being “ludicrously short-changed” by the Government when it comes to investment in tackling crime.

Government figures show that the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) was only awarded a funding package of £301,162 for just one of the three bids it submitted for the Safer Streets Fund. On the other hand, all three of Northamptonshire Police’s bids to the Home Office were successful and it received a total of £1,375,700 in grants- four times more than London.

The Safer Streets Fund was launched this year by the Government to tackle burglary and theft in crime hotspots across the country. In London, the investment from the successful bid will be targeted at the Hendon Park area of Barnet.

The chasm between the amount of funding allocated to the two authorities, comes despite the fact that the Northamptonshire Police force serves a population which is twelve times smaller than that of the Metropolitan Police’s jurisdiction.

Between March 2019 and March 2020, compared to Northamptonshire, 20 times more theft incidents and 16 times more burglaries took place in the capital.

London also received less of a share of the fund than a number of other more rural authorities, such as Devon and Cornwall and urban areas, such as Merseyside.

Mr Dismore is now urging the Home Office to review and expand the tendering process for the Safer Streets Fund so policing authorities can place more than three bids at a time.

He has highlighted the example of Bloomsbury, which has been impacted by burglary and theft, alongside a steep decline in footfall as a result of the pandemic, as one of the areas losing out on the investment.

The Mayor has called upon Ministers to provide emergency funding to protect public services, such as policing and the fire brigade, as the Greater London Authority (GLA) faces a budget shortfall of around £500 million as a direct impact of the Covid-19 outbreak.

This comes in the wake of almost £1 billion of Government cuts to the Met Police’s budget over the last decade.

London Assembly Member, Andrew Dismore AM, said:

“There is no doubt that my constituents who use Hendon Park will welcome this additional funding. However, the narrow scope of the scheme means that other parts of London, such as Bloomsbury where this sort of investment is urgently needed, will lose out.

“Bloomsbury has suffered increases in street crime which targets local residents, businesses and visitors to London in the West End, which needs reassurance in the current Covid-19 climate.

“It’s also impossible to escape the fact that the capital has been ludicrously short-changed when compared to other, much smaller areas of the country with lower rates of crime.

“You could say that the Met Police being subjected to almost £1 billion worth of Government cuts over the last decade is a form of daylight robbery in itself.

“City Hall has continuously pressed Ministers to adequately invest in tackling crime in the capital, but this falls on deaf ears time and time again. The Home Office needs to reconsider how it allocates this funding and ‘level-up’ the resources it provides to policing in London”.

ENDS

Notes

  • More information about the Government’s Safer Streets Fund and the breakdown of the scheme’s allocations to police authorities across England and Wales can be found here;
  • Government stats reveal that between March 2019 and March 2020, 449,278 theft incidents and 77,326 burglaries were recorded in the capital. This compares to 21,987 incidents of theft and 4,846 burglaries in recorded over the same period in Northamptonshire. This dataset was based upon estimates showing that Northamptonshire has a population that is twelve times smaller than London’s;
  • The Mayor has called upon Ministers to provide emergency funding to protect public services, such as policing and the fire brigade, as the Greater London Authority (GLA) faces a budget shortfall of around £500 million as a direct impact of the Covid-19 outbreak;
  • This comes in the wake of almost £1 billion of Government cuts to the Met Police’s budget over the last decade;
  • Andrew Dismore AM is the London Assembly Member for Barnet and Camden.
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