Londoners at greater risk of crime as Met budgets tighten

The government has given its clearest sign yet that it will not increase budgets for the Metropolitan police amid warnings a funding crisis will leave 9 million Londoners at greater danger of crime.

The Home Office said the Met gets more officers and money per capita of population than other forces, as the office of London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan said the Conservative government would not meet to discuss funding.

The Met has to find savings of more than £300m and Khan has warned officer numbers will fall to a level that police chiefs have described as dangerous.

Sophie Linden, London’s deputy mayor for policing, said home secretary Amber Rudd had refused to meet to discuss the funding crisis as early as June 2017.

Linden told the Guardian: “We think she is ducking her responsibility. She is not fighting the corner for the police the way you’d expect the home secretary to be fighting.

“I don’t think she understands the real pressures on the police and is not taking seriously the concerns of the experts.”

The Met has warned officer numbers could fall to 27,500 by 2021, their lowest in years, as violent crime rises and amid a continued severe terrorist threat.

In December the government froze police budgets police but allowed it to raise money locally through council tax.

“A flat cash settlement is a cut,” Linden said. “If we drop below 30,000 [officers] there will have to be some difficult discussions.”

A rising population in London, now at 8.6 million and predicted to hit 10 million by 2030, was adding to the pressure.

“The terrorist attacks put big demands on counter-terrorism policing, but also on the Met police. For every pound spent by counter-terrorism policing, £2 is spent out of the Met budget to respond.”

The Home Office said London policing was better resourced than anywhere else, amid claims from the Met and mayor’s office that policing the capital carries extra costs.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “There is more money and more officers for each Londoner than anywhere else in the country. The mayor is accountable to the London public for police performance and is empowered to raise the precept to increase funding for the Metropolitan police by around £43m.

“The Metropolitan police will receive £2.5bn in direct resource funding in 2018-19, of which over £1.9bn is government funding and £634m from the precept if maximised. The Met also has £240m of reserves to cover unexpected costs and invest, for example, in better technology.”

Last week Khan asked for urgent talks on rising violent crime. A Home Office spokesperson added: “The home secretary will be responding to the mayor of London following his correspondence of last week in due course.”

Linden warned of cuts to young people’s services, courts, probation and rehabilitative services for offenders.

Local funding is having to make up a bigger proportion of the Met’s budget, mainly through council and business taxes. It was 18% of funding for Britain’s biggest force in 2010 and is now up to 23%. Khan says money is being diverted from business taxation and other measures to pay for 1,000 officers.

The Met has made £600m in savings since 2011, and has made £150m more since 2016 when Khan became mayor. It has £325m more to find.

Linden added: “It does not let the home secretary off the hook and they need to put extra money into the Met.”

Rudd last met Khan in 2016 to formally discuss policing in London, Linden said.

The Met commissioner, Cressida Dick, has said it will be “incredibly demanding” for the Met to find hundreds of millions more pounds worth of savings on top of the £600m of cuts it had already made.

“I find it incredible to think that anybody would think that over the next four or five years we should lose that much extra out of our budget,” she said in October.