After part one of this two-part review of crime and policing in London, around the policy around policing of protests and other work by the Met Police in London; what of actual delivery? Mark Rowe asks.
Local government in London as elsewhere has, ever since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, taken up the legal responsibility to do something about crime; such as on-street CCTV, and patrolling wardens.
Some warden teams, like Hammersmith and Fulham’s Law Enforcement Team (LET), are substantial, to tackle fly-tipping, littering, antisocial behaviour and the like; things that either do not fall to the police, or that in practice a largely 999-responding, car-based police service is simply not well placed to handle. For example Hammersmith and Fulham have a public spaces protection order (PSPO) against ‘street harassment’, such as ‘sexist, homophobic, or transphobic slurs’ and wolf-whistling. In Greenwich in south-east London, a similar, also borough-wide PSPO came into force last year. Offenders (if caught and giving their name and address to patrollers) can be fined.
Further west in Hounslow, the borough council has paid for police to focus on ‘council priorities’, notably on housing estates. In July 2023, the council’s cabinet made a decision to continue funding that police team (one sergeant and 11 constables) for a further three years (£824,400 a year). However, senior local Met Police, according to a report to the cabinet in October, ‘advised they were not able to meet this ask’ and instead, made only five officers (one sergeant and four constables) available. That suggests the Metropolitan Police have a chronic staffing problem, despite the much-trumpeted under the Boris Johnson and then Rishi Sunak regimes of an ‘uplift’ in officers; the Met simply cannot recruit (and retain) enough to meet demand, even when money is there. The report said that Hounslow and its police take a ‘problem solving approach’.
Talking of problems, the sheer vibrancy of London – some streets can be as busy at midnight as midday – places further demands on the police, if they are the emergency service called on when other public services have gone home for the night. Hence nationally the ‘Right Care Right Person’ model whereby the Met like other police forces seeks to push back against the notion that police will respond to someone in mental distress. Under the model agreed in July 2023 in Suella Braverman’s time as Home Secretary, police won’t attend someone in mental health difficulties unless a crime is occurring or someone’s otherwise at risk of harm.
In September, Green Party London Assembly Member Zoë Garbett hailed the paramedics on duty in the north London borough of Hackney, but urged such ‘night medics’ London-wide; ‘the police cannot remain the default first responder to health calls late at night’, she said. Besides suggesting that it’s one thing for national politicians to say and decide fine things and another for them to actually come into being, it begs the question of why London has 32 boroughs, each doing its own things. While that brings local accountability and better fitting of services to local geography, why so little London-wide work? Why not a London-wide CCTV control room, for instance, instead of the patchwork across boroughs?
The truth is that London only on the map is one city; it’s at least two (north and south of ‘the river’) or many, perhaps even hundreds of villages or suburbs, some named, some in people’s heads. On that note, as the report to Hounslow’s cabinet noted, ‘perception of crime level was identified as being disproportionately high in comparison to actual crime rates’. In other words, while the council is adamant that it is (to quote from another document before the cabinet) ‘a low-crime borough’, actual crime (at least that recorded by police) might not tally with residents’ feelings about how likely they are to become a victim of crime; left unsaid is whether much of what makes locals feel unsafe – drug dealing, fly-tipping, antisocial behaviour – ever reaches the authorities.
While Hounslow was minded to continue the police contract – which was due for renewal in October 2024 – because the police’s work on a ‘range of community safety issues’ affecting housing managed stock and land was ‘an added benefit and value for money’, the authorities have a recurring problem about convincing people that they should, according to the statistics, feel safe. To be more exact, women, the elderly and disabled are more likely to say they feel unsafe.
This matters widely; for example, to consider Hounslow’s transport strategy, also put before the council’s cabinet in October, there’s little point in making cycle lanes, and otherwise promoting ‘improved cycling and walking opportunities’, and so forth, if people feel unsafe and take taxis or stay at home.
Hence the work on VAWG (violence against women and girls) and ‘safe havens’. You can see stickers to that effect on the doors of coffee shops, libraries and cathedrals; the borough of Lambeth in south London for example has 33. Businesses interested in becoming a Safe Haven should contact the Safer Business Network which provides (free) training for staff on how to be a ‘haven’, such as to offer phone charging or a place to catch breath. Visit saferbusiness.org.uk.
As for any difference between the perception among Londoners (and commuters and tourists) about crime, and actual crime – which may affect people enough to alter their habits, which may have an economic impact – one factor may be the highly publicised, shocking crimes, such as murder, whether by guns or knives. For example, the shooting dead of a 15-year-old at a park in Ladbroke Grove in July. Afterwards the leader of Kensington council, Elizabeth Campbell, told the council’s July meeting: “Like many boroughs across London, it feels like we are starting to see a worrying new normal, where crime now involves guns.” Significantly, she spoke then of ‘more police on our streets’ as a visible deterrent, and wishing for ‘more police on our streets’.
That begs the question of whether such extremes are thankfully rare or but the tip of an iceberg of near-misses, and violence; and whether the causes of violence are wider; for example, raised at that July council meeting at Kensington were school exclusions in the borough, ‘especially those from ethnic minorities and with special educational needs, and the detrimental impact on their life outcomes, such as mental health issues and imprisonment’, to quote from the minutes.
Camden councillor Adam Harrison, Cabinet Member for Planning, is pictured with members of the council’s community safety enforcement team; Camden’s patrollers have the power to issue fines (£120 for littering and £1,000 for fly-tipping).
Bid criteria
The October edition of Professional Security Magazine considered how councils judge tenders, whether based on (lowest) price or other criteria of those bidding. In north London, Camden’s cabinet recently agreed a procurement strategy for contracts to cover Camden’s Mechanical and Electrical (M&E) services including lifts and ‘ancilliary services’ such as door entry, shutters and gates, and CCTV maintenance, for council owned housing. Tenders will be weighted 60 per cent on price and 40pc service delivery and quality assessment (including ten per cent social value).
For part one of the review of crime and policing in London, click here.
