London
It has been officially confirmed that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is intending to invest a further £30 million to ensure that more than a thousand Met police officers will continue to patrol the streets of the capital for the next four years.
The Met have been able to recruit an additional 1,300 police officers to tackle crime over the past three years, 300 of which will continue to be funded by Mr Khan’s decisions on a recurring basis.
The investment is being put in place to protect 1,000 officers who have been put at risk by the impact of COVID-19 on business rates income, ensuring they will continue to be funded by City Hall to police London for the next four years.
Mr Khan is also hoping to invest an additional £8m of council tax funding in additional violence prevention programmes.
The Mayor of London remarked: “Violent crime had been increasing across the country and in London since 2014, while serious youth violence had been going up since 2013. We’ve worked hard to tackle violence in our city, and it started to fall well before the pandemic hit and has continued to do so. But I am not content or complacent, we still have a long way to go.
“If we are to see the long-term reductions in violence that we all want to see in our city, we must continue to tackle the underlying causes of crime, such as poverty, deprivation and lack of opportunities for young Londoners.
“I’m doing everything I can from City Hall to reduce violence, but it’s clear we still have huge financial challenges ahead because the Government has implemented a new era of austerity on public services in London. Ministers must now match my commitment to tackling this issue and fully refund City Hall and the Met for all the lost income and money spent tackling the pandemic.”
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