Met faces service cuts without more cash, says chief

The boss of the UK's largest police force has warned it faces "eye-watering cuts" to services unless ministers increase its funding.

Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told the BBC he was "deeply troubled" by talks so far on its annual settlement for next year.

He added that the force was in a "precarious position" because previously used options to "prop up" its budget were no longer available.

The government has said it plans to increase the overall policing budget next year - although allocations by force are still to be negotiated.

The Met's budget for this year is just over £3.5bn, a 3.5% increase from 2023/24, comprising £2.6bn from central government and £956m from local taxes.

Sir Mark said conversations over its funding allocation from next April - which would normally be expected to be announced in December or January - were still "ongoing" with the government and City Hall.

But, speaking to BBC Radio 4's Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, he said he was "deeply troubled by the situation we appear to be heading towards".

Policing a global capital such as London came with an "extra set of challenges", he said, adding that spending per person was lower than in other cities such as New York and Sydney.

He said that the "cumulative effect of decisions over the last decade or so" had put the force in a "more and more precarious position", and some of its buildings would be "unusable" in a few years without further investment.

“Some of the things that successive [police] commissioners and mayors have used to balance the books - like selling police stations and using reserves - all of those things have run out," he added.

“The chancellor has been very clear - it's a difficult public sector context."

'Tough choices'

"You add all those things together, and you get a dramatic change in budgets of a scale that's never going to be absorbed by efficiencies, and is going to require some pretty eye-watering cuts to the services we provide to London."

He added that he was not going to get into detail at this stage on the "tough choices" the force would face without an increase in resources.

But he said he planned to specify "10 or 20 things we're going to do differently" before Christmas.

He added that the implications for policing in the capital would "become more public" in the coming weeks.

The budget for the Home Office is set to shrink by 3.3% next year in real terms, with the bulk of this coming from assumed savings on asylum support.

At last month's Budget, the government said it planned to "increase the core government grant for police forces," although it did not specify whether this would be in cash terms or taking account of inflation.

Before the election, Labour also said it also planned to save £360m through more efficient purchasing of police equipment, which it promised to spend on extra community support officers.

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