The Met Police was placed into special measures in June 2022 following serious institutional failings. The Casey Report, released in March last year, highlighted serious problems with the culture of the organisation. Despite these interventions, a report released this week by His Majesty's Inspectorate shows that little seems to have improved.
The Met was rated as “requiring improvement” or “inadequate” (the two lowest ratings) in seven out of the eight graded areas. Worryingly, these areas include “investigating crime” and “preventing crime”, which are arguably the two main goals of any police service.
When reading reports like this, it’s worth remembering two things:
Firstly, Sadiq Khan was given £64 million by the Government to hire more police officers, but had to give some of the money back after failing to meet his recruitment target.
Secondly, the new Met Commissioner put together a plan – called the New Met for London, which set out how he wanted to fix the culture of the Met Police & rebuild trust, but Sadiq Khan refused to fund it. When he was setting his Mayoral Budget last year, he found an extra £630 million to spend, which he chose to use on gimmicks like the temporary “off-peak Fridays” scheme (which had almost no impact on passenger numbers) and renaming the London Overground lines.
With the recent scandals involving the Met Police, as well as rising levels of violent crime, keeping Londoners safe should be the biggest job on the Mayor’s desk – but he is simply ignoring it.
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