Safer Neighbourhood Policing: London

Mark Field Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ms Buck]

I hope that does not establish a pattern by which all my hon. Friends seize the opportunity to claim the credit for launching safer neighbourhood policing. In a sense, it does not matter. It was launched in 2004 by the then Labour Mayor of London, and I hope it prefigures important changes in policing by our future Labour Mayor of London, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who is sitting to my right.

Safer neighbourhood policing was an important response to a flaw in the way that London was policed over a number of years. It was always about more than just resources. Of course, it was partly about policing numbers, which had been falling for many years and were of great concern to Londoners, but it was also about having a different approach and attitude. The most unimportant aspect of it, although it was not wholly insignificant, was the fact that the area-based policing—the closest thing to the neighbourhood model that existed before 2004—was an unwieldly and clunky model of relating to communities. It did not work effectively, in terms of community participation and setting local priorities, and did not give local police continuity so they could establish the relationships they needed.

The safer neighbourhood policing model, which was introduced in 2004, reflected a commitment to return to communities, in all of their geographical, social and ethnic diversity. That commitment was, in part, informed by the experiences of the 1980s and 1990s. It encompassed, at the extremes, the important lessons we learned from the Scarman report on the terrible riots at the beginning of the 1980s and the Macpherson report. The Met learned important lessons from those terrible events, too.

Safer neighbourhood policing teams quickly changed the face of London policing. Indeed, they even helped to change the face of the police themselves. The police community support officer role was an important route for recruiting Londoners. One of the concerns that some of my colleagues will always have is that many of London’s police are drawn from outside London for different economic reasons. We want London’s police to reflect the face of modern London. The safer neighbourhood team route and the PCSOs, which were a part of that model, were a means of doing that. As Lord Stevens recognised at the time, they helped us to change the face of policing. It was obvious; when we, as local politicians, began to develop relationships with our police, we saw that changes were taking place.

The other critical issue about safer neighbourhood police teams in the early years was the commitment to a core team. At that point, they used the 1-2-3 model, comprising the sergeant, the constables and the three PCSOs. There was a commitment not to remove members of safer neighbourhood police teams to provide aid and assistance to other activities, but to provide the continuity that is crucial in keeping them connected to their local communities and give them time and space to develop important relationships with residents’ and tenants’ organisations, local schools, mosques, churches and youth clubs. In addition to a dedicated sergeant in each ward, they had someone with the skills and experience necessary to make those relationships work. The mere fact of being a sergeant does not give a person the ability to do that, but reflecting a degree of seniority within those police teams is important and it says something significant about the way in which relationships are built and sustained in communities.

I can think of several individuals—I am sure my colleagues and other hon. Members have faces that they can call to mind—who demonstrated a real change in policing style at the neighbourhood level. Stuart Marshall was the Queen’s Park sergeant for many years. He ultimately transferred to use the skills and knowledge he built up in the Queen’s Park ward—a deprived ward that includes the Mozart estate, which is a very challenging community—to continue to tackle antisocial behaviour with City West Homes. Ken Taylor built up a superb track record in the middle of the last decade in countering crack houses, which had become a plague in parts of London and required a new model of relationship building so the police could act quickly and close them down.

Ian Rowing was a long-term sergeant in Church Street. Only a few months ago—he had been in post since 2004—residents fought to keep him in Church Street because of the excellent relationships and local knowledge that he had built up. The residents said to me, “There is nothing he doesn’t know. There are no people he doesn’t know. He knows every corner of his ward. He knows what is going on, and he has built up a trusting relationship with people.” He was taken off, against all our wishes and advice, to fill some of the yawning gaps in the custody service, which are a huge challenge for London police at the moment.

Lawrence Knight is still serving Maida Vale and Little Venice brilliantly. Paul Reading, a member of his team, runs a boxing club in Little Venice. Anybody who wants to see the face of top-quality community policing should see the work he does. Over time, he has worked with hundreds of sometimes very challenging young men in that corner of London, and he has built up an enormous number of relationships based on trust and knowledge. Some of the newer people working now—I am not able to mention them all—include Sean Marshall, Ian Armstrong, Jason Emmett, John Marshall and Mohammed Nouri. They are relatively new, but their work has been absolutely superb.

But the model has changed, and I want to spend a few minutes talking about that. The continuity of the relationships that were built up and of the police teams themselves has largely evaporated. Under this mayoralty, since 2008 the Met has lost 23% of dedicated neighbourhood uniformed officers in London boroughs and more than 2,400 PCSOs since 2010 alone, and it has closed 63 police stations—we were told that their closure would lead to a huge reinvestment in community policing—due to the £600 million of budget cuts over the past four years.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The hon. Lady and I have worked together in Westminster during the time that we have been Members of Parliament, and I accept much of what she said about the importance of neighbourhood policing. Equally, we are clearly under financial constraints. No one can deny that that is part and parcel of what is driving the change. Does she accept that we have a model that has been in place now for more than a decade? London is changing quickly, although the City of Westminster is probably changing less quickly than many outer suburbs. Is there not a risk that if we simply persist with that model without looking for a model for the next decade or so, we will run into the problems of the past and have a model that is not fit for purpose for London in the 21st century?

[Ms Buck]

It would be foolish to argue for no change ever, and I am not doing so. Services have to change and adapt, and a number of different trends are going on in London. Our population is rising sharply, which has to be taken into account. Churn and turnover are also rising sharply, which reinforces the importance of community policing. Yes, of course we need to revise our model constantly, but, as I will describe, the changes to the local policing model were an error and took us completely in the wrong direction. Change, yes—but change for its own sake that undermines the core elements of community and relationship building, which is integral to neighbourhood policing, is a mistake.

I of course unreservedly welcome the fact that the autumn statement lifted the threat of a further £800 million- worth of cuts to the Met police, in particular to the remaining police community support officers. The Chancellor was right to heed the warnings of the devastation that cuts of that scale would wreak, but it would be completely wrong to say that we are now in the sunlit uplands. The settlement remains tight. Commissioner Hogan-Howe told the Greater London Authority police and crime committee last month that

“whatever we are going to have to cope with”

will be better than what was originally feared. He continued:

“There is no doubt that we still do have pressures. We have this £50 million for National Insurance that the organisation will have to find for pensions. We have a 1% pay increase baked into the budget… There is a series of other things. It is, no doubt, still challenging.”

On the threat of changes to the funding formula—the complete dog’s breakfast that we saw before Christmas—he said:

“That threat has not gone away because they said they will review it over the next 12 months and so we, on behalf of London, need to keep our eyes on that because London is unique.”

He also highlighted concern about the national and international capital city grant and said that

“we have a bid in. We normally get around £165 million. We thought that it is actually underpaid by about £200 million. We say that we paid £340 million on national issues that are relevant to the capital. They”—

the Home Office—

“accepted the case for £270 million.”

The Met in fact received £170 million. There is a continuing shortfall in national and international capital city status, which is highly relevant, because that underfunding leads to the undermining of the ward-based neighbourhood policing that is my concern.

We know that we remain under pressure and that budget cuts have had a serious impact on police numbers, which has been further complicated by the introduction of the local policing model and the redefinition of neighbourhood policing. However, we hear—we have heard it from the Mayor of London and will probably hear it from the Minister today—that neighbourhood policing in London has increased exponentially, not decreased. The Mayor has claimed that London has 2,600 additional neighbourhood officers, but that is a piece of sophistry. It is a definitional change that conceals a decrease of 2,500 dedicated borough officers and 3,200 dedicated borough PCSOs since 2010, reducing the ward teams from the 1-2-3 model to just one constable and one dedicated PCSO, and an increase in duties for the remaining neighbourhood teams.

[Mark Field]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. It is only fair given that the Mayor of London is not here to defend his record. She said that we claim to be increasing police numbers, but the sense was that we were going to redeploy those 2,600 into neighbourhood teams with a localised remit. I accept that that was a change from the remit that was introduced in 2004, but no one was suggesting for one minute that there would be additional police. It was a matter of redeploying police into neighbourhood teams.

[Ms Buck]

As I will briefly refer to at the end, we have seen a redeployment of officers within a reduced total and rebadging, which has led to confusion and a dilution of what neighbourhood policing was originally about.

The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime’s review of the local policing model stated last summer:

“Neighbourhood policing under the LPM is distinctly different to the previous ward based 1:2:3 delivery model which was identical across all London wards”.

The previous model’s critical defining element was a core service common to all London wards that could be enhanced or supplemented. Despite the uplift of officers into neighbourhood policing, as referred to by my neighbour, the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), the move to a single dedicated ward officer with a single dedicated ward PCSO represents a 77% reduction in ward-based neighbourhood policing when compared to the 1-2-3 model. In my borough of Westminster, we went from a total full-time-equivalent police strength of 1,632 in 2010 to 1,661 in 2012—there were changes in 2011 that meant that 2012 was a better base year—and then down to 1,327 in June 2015. The redistribution under the new service has led to a dramatic drop in our total police strength, which has led to the reduction in neighbourhood policing I have mentioned.

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[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for securing the debate and for her excellent speech to kick things off. She is a tenacious and passionate campaigner on behalf of her constituents. In this debate on safer neighbourhood policing in London she has clearly shown that she understands the big issues facing not only her constituents, but our citizens. It is great to see so many London colleagues present for this important debate.

I also pay tribute and put on the record my gratitude to all police and police community support officers, and to all who work for the Metropolitan police. They work day in, day out to protect us and to keep us as safe as possible, preventing crime, detecting those responsible for crime, playing a huge role in maintaining the rule of law and due process, and helping us to feel safer.

There is no point beating about the bush: the very future of safer neighbourhood policing in London as we know it is under threat. As has been said, one of the legacies of Ken Livingstone’s time as Mayor of London was the creation of dedicated community policing teams. I know from my own constituency just how successful and popular safer neighbourhood teams in London were and are. In some of the wards in and around my constituency, there were teams of at least one sergeant, two police officers and three PCSOs. As a resident, a ward councillor and a Member of Parliament, I saw at first hand their work to build community relations. They knew shopkeepers, vicars, priests, imams, neighbourhood watch co-ordinators, resident association members, head teachers and youth leaders. They actually spoke to and engaged with youngsters and made an effort to build relations with parts of our diverse communities that previously had no relations with the police.

The teams’ networks gave them a unique insight into what was happening on the ground and in their patch—proper, old-fashioned community policing: bobbies back on the beat, some would say, not only providing reassurance to the community, but acting as the eyes and ears for gathering intelligence, preventing crimes from happening and clearing them up when they did. That is what policing by consent is all about.

Over recent years, however, safer neighbourhood policing has been devastated in London. While we have had a Conservative Mayor and a Conservative Prime Minister, the number of officers has been steadily eroded. Since May 2010, the number of PCSOs in London has dropped by up to three quarters, with some boroughs—Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham, Lambeth, Wandsworth and Westminster—seeing falls of 80% or more. I have with me some of the figures, which cover the period between May 2010 and September 2015. Hackney has lost 69% of its PCSOs and 29% of its uniformed officers; Harrow, 75% of its PCSOs and 24% of its uniformed officers; Hounslow, 75% of its PCSOs and 11% of its uniformed officers; Kingston—I am sorry that the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry), whose borough this is, has left the Chamber—75% of its PCSOs and 19% of uniformed officers; and Lambeth, 80% of its PCSOs and 32% of its uniformed officers. Across the whole Metropolitan Police Service, 62% of PCSOs and 11% of uniformed officers have been lost. In some areas, there is one officer left, or at best two. There is no longer the same dedicated team for geographical areas as there once was.

Although crime has been broadly falling over the past decade and a half, too many areas of London are still blighted by antisocial behaviour. Violent crime is up across the city and, worryingly, knife crime is on the rise again.

[Mark Field]

The right hon. Gentleman will recognise that the broader metric of crime is down. Does that not suggest, to a large extent, that, given the financial constraints that any Mayor or Government would have been under in recent years, the Metropolitan police has done a pretty good job of utilising diminishing resources to ensure that people are kept as safe as possible? While I very much accept some of the concerns about the breakdown of the neighbourhood model to which he refers and the importance of integrating with other agencies, broadly there is a good case for saying that, given those financial constraints, we have done a pretty good job, although we should not be complacent about the future.

[Sadiq Khan]

The police service does a fantastic job under very difficult circumstances. However, internet crime is going through the roof, along with serious youth violent crime, knife crime, knife crime with injury, gun crime and gun crime with firearm discharge. I pay tribute to the remarkable work done by police officers and CSOs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field]

The hon. Lady and I agree on many things, and we have worked together as neighbouring MPs on broadband and the like, but it really is nonsense to suggest that the Government are trying to shrink the state to any great extent. We are still living miles beyond our means—we are borrowing at the rate of £75 billion to £80 billion a year—and the notion that the Government have taken a slash-and-burn approach is quite wrong. I accept that, with some of the austerity agenda, there has had to be some reduction in public spending, particularly in the area we are discussing, but the notion that this is a state-shrinking Government is very far from the truth.

[Meg Hillier]

I think my constituents would beg to differ: this is an area where they do want to see the state visible and active on the streets.

Over the past five years in Hackney, crime has continued to drop. However, Hackney has lost 173, or more than a fifth, of its police officers—in October 2010, it had 770, but there are now 597. It has also seen a dramatic cut in PCSOs, from 100 to 37. There were recently plans to axe all our PCSOs, but thankfully those have been dropped. I echo the really important point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North that safer neighbourhood policing was a vital recruitment line for the police—the police in Hackney still do not look like Hackney, so that was really important. It is important that our overstretched officers are supported by good PCSOs.

Let me just highlight how our officers are overstretched. For more than a decade, Operation Bantam has provided an effective response to gang violence in Hackney, which is sadly still a scourge and a challenge for the police, the community and local authorities. There used to be a team of 40 dedicated officers; now there are six, and that is a real concern. I back Hackney Council’s campaign to bring 100 officers back to Hackney to make sure we deliver for the people of my constituency and my borough.

PCSOs were introduced under the last Labour Mayor of London, and I look forward to having a future Labour Mayor of London who recognises their importance. Previously, seven different uniformed officers and wardens patrolled my constituency. Many were funded by the Home Office or the Department for Communities and Local Government, while some were funded by the police or local authorities. There was a crazy mishmash—a multi-coloured rainbow—of different uniforms and different powers, and it made sense to bring those officers together. As a result, however, they were then at risk from these cuts and changes, because of the other pressures on the policing budget, and that is a regret.

There are two key benefits from safer neighbourhood policing. First, there are people on the streets, and having more PCSOs on the streets saves vital police officer time. Those three PCSOs in the ward also really got to know their area, and they often stayed longer than the police, unless they planned to become police officers themselves.

The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) mentioned the National Audit Office report on policing, which the Public Accounts Committee has looked at. We visited and had evidence from forces around the country. The hon. Gentleman rightly said that many forces do not have good enough data to know the impact of the cuts coming down the line or the needs of policing locally. What is really crucial and really unforgivable, however, is that when the Home Office makes a cut and sends it down the line to the police, it does not have the data to know what the impact will be. I would like the Minister to address that directly.

The funding formula is one issue, and we do not need to dwell on what a mess it was; that is now fairly well acknowledged, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who speaks from the Front Bench, will touch on that. However, there is also cost shunting, which is a consistent concern on the Public Accounts Committee. We see police officers, as the providers of first and last resort, picking up the pieces for other services, but that is not recognised in the funding formula or in cross-Government working. It is really important—I challenge the Police Minister on this—that the police service should not be picking up the pieces because Departments have cut funding and do not recognise the impact on the police. I would like the Minister to tell the House how he will challenge that.