Met Police to move officers from major events as England weighs cutting 39 forces to nine

Fewer officers at major events

Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, told the London Assembly that the force is resetting its policing priorities. Officers are being moved away from major events and into community policing, a shift that freed up 6,000 shifts in October. Rowley linked the change to "financial pressures" and asked Assembly members for their support. He warned that some incidents in central London would now take longer to bring under control, and he put the risk plainly.

“It will mean that sometimes events in the centre of London will happen in a way that wasn't anticipated, and will take longer to squash and deal with.”

He said London's politicians regularly complain that neighbourhood officers are pulled away too often, and he framed the trade-off in terms of local resourcing.

“The prize for taking that more measured approach is that we have more resources in local communities.”

Misconduct backlog

Rowley also described challenges with the volume of misconduct cases involving officers, which he said had "massively increased" in recent years. He called the threshold for opening an investigation "so low" and said officers' time was being used up "investigating trivial matters". Susan Hall, leader of the Conservatives on the Assembly, relayed that the Metropolitan Police Federation had told a recent committee meeting that thousands of officers were on restricted duties or garden leave while their cases were pending. Rowley accepted that cases had taken too long, but said the number of days per case has been falling rapidly over the past six months. He pointed to a review of the system commissioned by the home secretary, and he voiced his worry about the rules:

“I'm concerned that the police regulations don't give enough discretion on which cases to investigate and which cases to not.”

A review that could cut England's forces to nine

An official review carried out by former Met commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has concluded that England's 39 forces should be cut to as few as nine super forces. Multiple sources say the review sets out a range of nine to 18 larger forces, sitting above more than 150 local policing units that would handle most neighbourhood crime work. Hogan-Howe completed the review in September and sent it to home secretary Shabana Mahmood, but it has not been published. Government sources have said it will come out before Christmas, with a white paper expected in the new year. The delay is understood to be linked to Andy Burnham's devolution agenda, which includes adding more mayors, and some new forces would be covered by mayors while others would not.

Chief constables split over the plan

A police source warned that tying the new structures to mayors could leave 20 or more forces, which the source said was not a radical enough change. Rowley was scheduled to meet Burnham on Friday, 6 November, at No 10 North in Manchester. That meeting follows an event at which Rowley, Greater Manchester chief constable Stephen Watson and other chiefs were set to press for a sharp cut in the number of forces. Not every chief is on board. Some chief constables who spoke to the Guardian resented the Met's role in organising the gathering, and they are sceptical of, or opposed to, a reduction to nine forces. The report itself remains unpublished.