In accordance with the Council’s Constitution, questions to this Committee must be received in writing 4 working days before the date of the meeting. Therefore please ensure questions are received by the Democratic Services Team by 5pm on 12th January 2016.
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Minutes:
The Portfolio Holder updated the Committee as follows:
The Portfolio Holder had previously allocated funding to Challenger Troop, and agreed that the Emergency Planning section needed some form of resource allocation. A member queried if the Emergency Planning function could be outsourced to LFB.
The Portfolio Holder had recently attended a meeting of the APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) for London.
APPGs were an informal cross party group who joined together to pursue a particular topic or interest. They were run for and by members of both the Commons and the Lords.
The Portfolio Holder recently attended a meeting of the GLA. The meeting was Chaired by Victoria Borwick. Brian Paddick, Jenny Jones and a group of Lords and Baronesses were also in attendance.
Sophie Linden and Craig Mackey, (Deputy Met Commissioner) gave an update on the Police and Crime Plan that was out for consultation.
Sophie Linden updated the APPG as follows:
Priorities:
1. Restoring Neighbourhood Policing:
Ms Linden was assessing ways of increasing the diversity of officers so that the MPS looked and felt like the community it served.
2. Establishing a London Wide Criminal Justice System:
Much good work had been done and Ms Linden was looking to build on this. However, she hoped for the devolvement of this function to the Mayor to complete the programme successfully. The GLA was lobbying the government to this end. Ms Linden commented that the Probation Service in London recently had a poor report.
3. VAWG:
Ms Linden acknowledged that a good strategy was in place from the previous Mayor concerning VAWG and that she wanted to build on this. The GLA had undertaken a needs assessment and were shocked to discover that on average, every week 11 women were seriously assaulted in every Ward in London. An explanation was being sought to explain the increased levels of reporting.
4. Protecting children and young people:
Work would be undertaken with Local Authorities to ensure the right partnerships were in place to protect young people. MOPAC would be producing a strategy to tackle knife crime, which would include working with communities, retailers, and online sellers of knives.
5. Hate Crime, Extremism and Intolerance.
Even before the EU Referendum, the previous two years had seen an increase in Hate Crime. MOPAC wanted people to feel confident in coming forward to report it. Investigations would take place to determine whether current sentences for perpetrators were appropriate
Across all of these priorities were the themes of: early intervention and prevention; partnership working; and tackling the causes..
Craig Mackey
Mr Mackey started by outlining the financial position of the MPS.
To date £600m had been saved; however a further £400m in savings was still required.
The MPS felt that the Capital City Grant was £170m short, and they were lobbying the government in an attempt to reduce the shortfall. Next year the MPS had a balanced budget. Years 2, 3 and 4 were not yet balanced.
The MPS was currently in receipt of 25% of the whole policing budget for England and Wales. There were plans to reallocate budgets and there were concerns that the MPS may lose funding as a result.
Mr Mackey gave an overview of the current crime picture of London. Crime overall was up by 3% across London but was higher than this nationally. Burglary and street robbery had seen big drops over the last few years, but rape and sexual assaults had seen large increases. It was important to determine what the underlying factor/s were in causing the change in data.
There had been an increase in dealing with complex issues such as missing people and dealing with people with mental health issues. Also there had been an increased workload related to counter terrorism.
There was a brief mention of BCUs. Mr Mackey expressed the view that doing the same thing in 32 separate Boroughs may not necessarily be the best way forward. He felt that it was important to make the levels of leadership more efficient.
The 101 number had been a success, with 70,000 calls in the last eight months. There was an intent to encourage people to report crimes online and for a better web presence to be created.
Finally he talked about the MPS’s technology vision, which was that they wanted everything that Police could do on a PC at a police station to be possible to do on a mobile device in any location. This would free up 10% of time for officers and had been signed off by the Deputy Mayor.
Jenny Jones asked a question about Traffic Policing. She expressed the view that when budgets were cut, the first aspect to be cut was traffic policing. Mr Mackey responded that no plans existed to reduce traffic policing. This could be a debate for the future if there was no option other than to reduce officer numbers, but no current plans for this were being drawn up.
Jenny Jones asked about ‘Prevent’ and how this was linked to the aim of preventing extremism. Ms Linden answered that ‘Prevent’ would work hand in hand with MOPAC’s plans. However she commented that ‘Prevent’ was not consistently rolled out across Boroughs and that different Boroughs had different budgets for it. She stated that this might be something that Boroughs chose to co-commission.
Concerning Hate Crime, Ms Linden stated that an online Hate Crime Hub was planned, and that they were tracking to see what happened to offenders following their arrests.
It had been discovered that, worryingly, only 25-30% of knife crime was related to gangs. Therefore there had been an increase in people not in gangs carrying knives. They needed to understand why this was. Mr Mackey commented that it would be interesting to see what Met Officers said in the current survey about officers carrying guns and tasers.
The budget allocated to the Crime Prevention Fund was £72m per annum. Next year there would be no change. Over the last four years, funding had been allocated on the basis of successful bids, not based on needs. MOPAC would be looking at the needs of each Borough based on indicators such as JSA claimants, children on child protection registers, etc.. Where Boroughs did not have the resources to be efficient, they should team up with other boroughs. All of the 30% top slice should come back to the boroughs.
It was noted that Mental Health was about 30% of the Police’s workload.
After the meeting, Bob Neill MP introduced the Portfolio Holder to the Deputy Mayor, who said she was coming to Bromley in the near future. In fact, she would be visiting all the London Boroughs.
Ms Linden had planned to meet the Leader, the Portfolio Holder, the Chief Executive and senior Bromley officers on 24th February. However this had been cancelled but would be re-scheduled.
The Portfolio Holder had put her name forward to be on a high-level group led by the Lead Member for Crime and Public Protection at London Councils. This was being established to oversee the development of criteria for the London Crime Protection Co-Commissioning Pot. This group would liaise and engage with MOPAC at a pan-London level in relation to the proposals and deployment of the 30% top slice.
The Portfolio Holder would find out in due course if her application had been accepted.
RESOLVED that the update from the Portfolio Holder be noted.