Local policing cuts risk 'disaster' for national security, police anti-terror chief warns

Cuts to local policing risk a “disaster” for maintaining national security, one of the country’s top counter-terrorism officers has warned.

Neil Basu, the senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism policing, said teams tackling Islamist and neo-Nazi extremists become “divorced from the frontline” when bobbies are taken off the beat.

Mr Basu’s comments in The Guardian come after Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick warned that the force is under “unprecedented” pressure, tackling an increase in crime with fewer officers and pressure to find millions of pounds in savings.

He warned that two decades of work in neighbourhood policing – a means of gaining intelligence about potentially catastrophic terror plots – is “in danger of disappearing”.

“For me, that is a national security issue,” he told The Guardian.

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He went on: “When we don’t have those people we will become so divorced from the frontline, and the frontline of communities, that will be a disaster for policing in this country.

Asked if it would threaten national security, he said: “Yes, because where’s the intelligence coming from?”

The UK has experienced five terror attacks in 2017 when the threat “went absolutely stratospheric”, Mr Basu said.

At least one plot was reportedly foiled hours before an attack after police received a community tip-off.

(Top picture: Getty)