Police officer cuts could be partly reduced, London Assembly finds
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Potential cuts to the number of officers in the Metropolitan Police could be significantly less severe than feared, according to an analysis by the London Assembly. Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said in December that the force was facing a £450m funding shortfall, which could possibly require cutting 2,300 officers in the coming financial year.
But an analysis by the Assembly’s budget and performance committee suggests that any such cuts could be drastically mitigated. In a letter to Sir Sadiq Khan, the committee’s Conservative chairman, Neil Garratt, pointed out that the latest version of the mayor’s budget includes an extra £78m for “police officer pay”.
Neither the mayor’s office, nor the Met, is saying at this stage how exactly that additional funding will be used, or what it could mean for total officer numbers. In his letter, Mr Garratt said that the extra cash nonetheless “suggests that the planned reduction in officer numbers may be somewhat mitigated”.
He added: “For example, we were told that the budget assumption of the average cost of a police officer [in a single year] was £77,000. The additional £78m proposed funding for police officer pay could therefore fund around a thousand police officers, and reduce the previous planned reduction of 2,300 to 1,300, depending on the timescales involved.
“However, these are our own estimates which are not reliable given the limited information available. MOPAC [the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime] has not provided an official account of its planned officer reductions. We urge it to do so as quickly as possible.”.
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