UK terror threat level to stay at severe for 'at least 5 years'

The terror threat level will remain at severe for at least the next five years, the Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner has warned.

Neil Basu, the senior counter-terrorism officer at Scotland Yard, said it had been a “summer like no other”, following four terror attacks in three months in Manchester and London.

He warned that “segregated and isolated communities” in the UK are a “breeding ground” for extremism, identifying a “definite problem” of second-generation Britons who become radicalised online.

Speaking at the Police Superintendents’ Association annual conference, he said they were “an unknown threat in our midst”.

In the aftermath of the Manchester Arena terror attack that left 23 dead and 250 injured the terror threat was raised to “critical” — meaning another attack was expected imminently.

Basu said the attack led to a “massive spike” in the number of calls to the national terrorism hotline.

The said the number new of investigations launched since March has risen by 75 per cent to 65.

Security services currently have 3,000 open “subjects of interest”, while there are 20,000 previous subjects of interest.

Basu warned that “those numbers are just going to keep increasing” as he called for more resources to be devoted to Prevent, the government’s anti-terrorism scheme.

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Basu said the type of threat has now changed.

“The threat was the traveller or the returning fighter, who was battle-hardened and even angrier, but now it’s the threat in our midst,” he said.

“Segregated and isolated communities, unregulated and home schooling are a breeding ground for extremism and future terrorism.

“They have been the educated, they have been the illiterate and they have been the completely unknown,” he said.

Earlier in the year, a former intelligence adviser to the government warned that the potential terrorist threat to the UK is far greater than MI5 has estimated.

Colonel Richard Kemp said that MI5’s figure of 23,000 “suspects of interest” is likely just “the tip of the iceberg”.

In an interview with BBC Newsnight, the former chair of the Cobra Intelligence Group said the UK is “reaping the horrors” after years of failing to deal with extremism.

“It [23,000] is a huge number, but I don’t think in any way it will cover the full spectrum,” he told the programme. “I think there are probably many, many more that are involved in that type of activity.

“It would seem to me, from my experience of intelligence, that it would be extremely unlikely that MI5, very effective though they are, have got a full understanding of the scale of the problem that exists in the United Kingdom,” he said.