{"id":418805,"date":"2025-09-12T15:51:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T15:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/418805\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T15:51:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T15:51:17","slug":"police-counter-closures-in-london-pragmatic-says-mayor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/418805\/","title":{"rendered":"Police counter closures in London ‘pragmatic’, says mayor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite these closures, Sir Sadiq made a manifesto pledge to maintain a 24-hour police front counter in every London borough.<\/p>\n

In 2023, he intervened to keep one such service in west London open<\/a>, shortly before a parliamentary by-election in the constituency.<\/p>\n

But this week he told Assembly Members: “When the facts change, I change my mind.<\/p>\n

“Very few people use front counters \u2013 it’s just a fact.”<\/p>\n

Sir Sadiq – who oversees the work of the Met Police Commissioner – said he had been told the plans would save the force \u00a37m.<\/p>\n

“I made a pragmatic decision to listen to the advice of the police and pivot that funding to an improved Command and Control Centre.<\/p>\n

A Met Police spokesperson said only 5% of crimes were reported using front counters last year, with only 1% of these being made during the night. <\/p>\n

The force added that the \u00a37m saving would allow it to “focus resources relentlessly on tackling crime and putting more officers into neighbourhoods across London”.<\/p>\n

However, Assembly Members said people visited counters for other reasons, such as reporting missing people, seeking guidance or using them as a place of safety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite these closures, Sir Sadiq made a manifesto pledge to maintain a 24-hour police front counter in every…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-418805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115192128056263722","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}