Met Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley warns of 'eye-watering cuts'

The head of Britain's biggest police force has warned the Labour government is threatening it with 'eye-watering' cuts to services.

Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told of being 'deeply troubled' by initial discussions so far with ministers and officials following the Chancellor Rachel Reeves's Budget last month. 

He urged the Government to boost funding for Scotland Yard, saying that previously-used options to 'prop up' its accounts have now run out.

Sir Mark said the force was in a 'precarious position', despite government pledges to ramp up the overall policing budget next year - with allocations still to be determined. 

The Met's budget for this year stands at just over £3.5billion, up by 3.5 per cent compared to 2023-2024, and involving £2.6billion from central government as well as £956million from local taxes.

Talks over the funding to be provided from next April are still ongoing, with both the Labour government and London's City Hall, Sir Mark said.

But he told BBC Radio 4's Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast that he felt 'deeply troubled by the situation we appear to be heading towards'.

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Sir Mark, who took over from Dame Cressida Dick in September 2022, highlighted how the Met's police funding per person was lower than in other major cities such as New York in the US and Sydney in Australia. 

And he warned that some of the force's  buildings in the capital would prove 'unusable' in the next few years if no further investment came.

He told the programme: 'Some of the things that successive commissioners and mayors have used to balance the books - like selling police stations and using reserves - all of those things have run out.

'The Chancellor has been very clear - it's a difficult public sector context.

'You add all those things together, and you get a dramatic change in budgets of a scale that's never going to be absorbed by efficiencies, and is going to require some pretty eye-watering cuts to the services we provide to London.'

Sir Mark added that he would be more specific about '10 or 20 things we're going to do differently' before Christmas.

The Home Office's own budget is expected to reduce by 3.3 per cent next year in real terms, largely through savings on asylum support.

Ms Reeves said in last month's Budget that the Treasury would 'increase the core government grant for police forces', though it has not yet been stipulated whether this would be in cash terms or else taking account of inflation.

The Labour Party had said before the general election in July this year that there were plans to save £360million through more efficient buying of police equipment, with extra cash to be spent on community support officers.

Sir Mark issued a warning in January this year about the impact of under-funding on police recruitment efforts, amid fears that the number of murder detectives could be cut.

The commissioner, giving evidence to the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee, said: 'I'm really disappointed that government policy means that the approximately £60million of funding for the officers that we didn't recruit has been withdrawn.

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'I could use that money very effectively in growing police staff members to free officers up to go on the streets.

'We have the smallest proportion of police staff in the organisation of any police force in the country - that's something I've been concerned about since day one and we've got officers effectively doing support and resource functions instead because we don't have the staff.'

In August last year it was reported that the previous Conservative government had withdrawn £31million in recruitment funding from Scotland Yard despite warnings it was already anticipating a shortfall in staff of some 2,000 officers.

Ministers had set aside funding as part of a Tory manifesto pledge to recruit 20,000 new officers over a period of five years by March 2023, dubbed the Police Uplift Programme.

As the Met did not meet its recruitment targets, it was then hit with an compounded loss of £30.8million earmarked as grant funding. 

London's knife crime epidemic has increased each year since the Covid-19 pandemic, with 13,503 incidents in the capital between July 2022 and July 2023 - up by 21 per cent year on year.

A senior murder detective told he Telegraph: 'The officers are telling us they are in danger of burning out and yet the top brass are telling us we need to make efficiencies.

'The idea that there is any fat to trim within murder is crazy. If anything, we need more resources, not less.'

MailOnline has approached the Home Office for comment on Sir Mark's latest comments.