Wandsworth police numbers jump to over 650
Battersea MP Martin Linton met Wandsworth’s new police commander Joe Royle last week to discuss the big increase in police numbers. There will be an extra 24 police officers working in eight local Safer Neighbourhood Teams by April and Wandsworth has also won an extra 12 police officers in the annual share-out of extra resources by the Metropolitan Police Authority, announced this week.
That will bring the number of police posts in the Wandsworth borough division of the Met from 567 last year to 603 in the coming year.
Martin said the figures were excellent news:
“I know that our new police commander has the ambition to make Wandsworth the safest borough in London and I see it as my job to make sure that he gets the resources, both from the Government and from the Greater London Authority, to realise that ambition.
“The Home Secretary and the Mayor of London are working closely together to ensure that the Met has the resources to reduce the level of crime and to make sure the police are a visible and dependable presence on our streets, especially in high-crime areas.
“This Labour Government’s target is to cut crime by another 20% over the next three years on top of the 30% reduction we have had so far. That may be ambitious, but crime can make people’s life an absolute misery and it’s important we put all our effort and resources into achieving this reduction.
“The new Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair recently praised the Metropolitan Police Authority for a near 40% increase in funding over the past five years, saying the service has been ‘rebuilt’. We are seeing new ways of policing, with expert teams at the centre working alongside local police and CSOs gathering information and deterring criminals and anti-social behaviour.
“The Government emphasis is on increasing the size of local and central forces, supplementing them with uniformed support, and at the same time increasing the powers of local authorities and landlords to deal with neighbourhood security and anti-social problems.”
“It seems strange Wandsworth Council should choose this moment to withdraw their funding for the Street Patrol in Clapham Junction which has been doing such a good job in deterring street crime and dealing with lower-level offences such as fly-tipping, dumped cars and graffiti.”
On top of the higher police figures, Wandsworth has 25 Police Community Support Officers and is expecting to gain another 24 working in the Safer Neighbourhood Teams to bring the total to 49. The total number of police officers and police support officers working for the Wandsworth division should then be 652 – an increase of nearly 100 in the last three years.
This follows strong pressure from the former borough police commander Martin Jauch who persuaded the Metropolitan Police Authority to increase Wandsworth’s entitlement under the Resource Allocation Formula. Out of 32 London boroughs Wandsworth received the third highest increase this year.
But for every two police officers working in borough police divisions, there are another two working directly for the Met, and while the Wandsworth borough division has grown, the overall number of police officers in London has grown even faster. In 2005-6 there will be 30,000 police officers in the Met, up from 25,000 four years ago, thanks to a £109 million increase in Government grant to the Met, bringing the total close to £2 billion, announced in December.
