Labour’s police counter closures are a reckless betrayal that gambles with Londoners’ safety and trust

The announcement (or lack of) of reduction in hours and closure of many of London’s Police Front Counters has been one of the shambolic I’ve seen. The news was leaked, the Mayor’s office was slow to react, the Assembly recalled, and still, we only know the bare minimum. Londoners have been figuratively left in the dark; many more are about to be quite literally left there.

The police front counters are a lifeline to many Londoners, a place of sanctuary, especially at night. Whether it's frightened young women seeking safety and help after being followed, a safe place to take a friend whose drink may have been spiked, or older residents collecting crime reference numbers for insurance claims, the victim checking on case progress, the small business owner discussing crime prevention measures. All of these visit matter. Which is why I was shocked to learn that none of these vital interactions are captured in the Mayor's convenient statistics.

The justification for given for these proposal is one of the most cynical uses of manipulated statistics I have witnessed. It relies heavily on statistics showing "low footfall" at station counters, measured purely by crime reports submitted in person. This narrow metric completely ignores the myriad other reasons why residents visit their local police stations every single day. To not record this information means these closures are gamble with the safety of Londoners.

By only painting part the picture, the Mayor can claim that station counters are underused whilst simultaneously ignoring their crucial role as community safety anchors. It's like measuring hospital usage by counting only major surgeries whilst ignoring all the consultations, check-ups, and support services that make hospitals essential to community health.

This data distortion serves a darker purpose: it allows the Labour administration at City Hall to abandon a clear manifesto commitment whilst claiming evidence-based decision making. In his manifesto last year, Sadiq Khan explicitly promised to maintain accessible police services across London, yet here he stands, using cherry-picked statistics to justify breaking that promise. It's political cowardice dressed up as fiscal responsibility.

The human cost of these closures extends far beyond the limited crime reporting metrics. By closing these counters, they're not just reducing reporting options, they're severing the threads that connect communities to their protectors. What sort of a city will we be when in the middle of a crime wave you can no longer walk into a police station to report the crime you see?

The flawed methodology is yet another attack on London’s increasingly fragile night-time economy. At a time when we are asking businesses to become sanctuaries if anyone needs assistant while out, the Mayor is slamming the doors shut on many of our police stations. Instead of locking criminals up, Labour are shutting those in need out.

Nine years of Labour running London has left the Metropolitan Police with a £260 million blackhole. Budget after budget at City Hall, the Conservatives on the Assembly have sought to boost Police funding but cutting waste elsewhere in the Mayor’s multi-billion budget. Yet every year our amendments are rejected. These closure proposals, and the cutting of thousands of police jobs this year, represent the inevitable endpoint of years of managed decline disguised as modernisation.

Since 2016 Labour have closed more than half of London’s police bases and stations. They have left officers waiting for the bus instead of being on the beat. They’ve created a recruitment crisis in the Met which is costing London thousands of officers each year. Labour have made the Met less visible, less approachable and further away from the communities they serve.

London's communities deserve honesty about what these closures really mean. They deserve accurate data that reflects the full range of police-community interactions, not manipulated statistics designed to justify predetermined outcomes. Most importantly, they deserve political leaders who will fight for accessible policing rather than finding excuses to abandon it.

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Thomas Turrell AM is the Conservative London Assembly Member for Bexley & Bromley

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