Letter Southwark Police numbers

Police numbers sadly have been a political football over recent years. With claims and counter claims. We all feel inherently more Police officers is a good thing.

Southwark Labour and Southwark Council have stated in official documents that since 2010 Southwark Borough Police has lost 300 police and PCSO’s.

The Met Police Service has been and continues to be restructured under the 20/20/20 plan. This restructures various units which would in the past have purely serviced one Borough Operational Command unit (OCU) such as Southwark Borough have been centralised and therefore now serve more that one OCU. This gives the appearance of drastic reduction in Southwark Police numbers. This is well known to politicians but is being used to suggest a huge reduction in Southwark Police number disingenuously knowing it is a falsehood. It needlessly causes fear.

Units such as Custody, Intelligence, Events planning/Duties and Roads Policing continue to serve the needs of Southwark but the officers deployed on these units no longer belong to Southwark Police.

Therefore the premise that Southwark has ‘lost 300 officers’ does not accurately convey the situation, because the ‘hubbed’ officers mentioned continue to perform core functions for Southwark Police.

Letter about Police numbers to confirm the above: