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Mayor's office announces £110m investment into the Met
Sadiq Khan announced on Thursday that he would be investing an additional £110m into the Metropolitan Police over the next twelve months.
The Mayor, who confirmed the investment ahead of his budget being sent to the London Assembly for approval, had previously warned that with further savings needed, the Met would inevitably run out of options and would've had to cut jobs in order to make ends meet.
Khan's heightened investment meant that City Hall would be paying a greater percentage of the overall police budget in London than ever before - up from 18% in 2010 to 23%, shifting the burden for policing the capital away from the taxpayer.
Since 2010-11, the Met's general grant funding from the Government has fallen nearly 40%, or more than £700m, the Mayor said, and in recent years the Met Police had been forced to find roughly £600m of savings, with Khan finding a further £150m of savings since he took office.
This decline in funding has led to the loss of a third of police staff posts, down from 14,330 to 9,985 and two-thirds of police community support officer roles, down from 4,607 to 1,591, as well as the closing of 114 police station front counters and 120 buildings, with fears that police officer numbers in the capital could fall significantly below 30,000 before 2021.
"The Government have repeatedly refused to act on the funding crisis facing police services across Britain, so they have left me with no choice but to take the unusual step of increasing police funding from London business rates as well as council tax," Khan said.