Police in post offices as Scotland Yard axes 65 stations across London

Officers to set up shop in post offices and supermarkets as Met seeks to boost public confidence and meet £500m budget cuts

The Scotland Yard building in central London would be one of 200 sold off as part of the cuts. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Scotland Yard is to close 65 police stations to the public across London and move its front desks into post offices and supermarkets as part of proposals to make £500m budget cuts.
In a blueprint for the future that will see the role of the detective at the Yard – once considered to have the finest investigators in the world – apparently downgraded, 1,200 more constables will be put into boroughs, and neighbourhood teams will be boosted by 2,600 officers.
Closing police stations mapped. Click image to explore it Eight hundred of the 1,200 extra constables will be detectives who are to be taken out of specialist squads, such as the burglary squad, and put back into uniform and on to the streets. The aim is to hand investigative powers to neighbourhood constables for low-level crime. They will be led by a "sheriff" in each London borough, and will be supported by teams of special constables, PCSOs and some detectives within each of the 32 boroughs of the force.
Assistant Commissioner Simon Byrne described detectives as "constables in T-shirts and jeans" and said he wanted to end the division between uniformed officers and detectives.
While carrying out what the commissioner has in the past admitted are huge cuts to the budget, the mayor's office wants public confidence in the police to rise from 62% to about 75%, and to reduce crime in seven key areas by 20%.
The mayor's office for policing and crime confirmed that the Scotland Yard building in central London would be one of 200 sold off as part of the cuts.
Within six months a pilot of putting police officers into post offices will be unveiled.
Byrne said: "This is about fundamental change. I think we can demonstrate that we care about local priorities. The way that neighbourhood policing in London is run compared with other examples of good practice is that we can do more.
"Too often the enforcement is carried out by the constables on the neighbourhood teams but the investigation of the crime is fed to individual specialist squads. We want to streamline that. We want to put more officers out to have face-to-face visible contact with the public, criminals and victims of crime, to extend the hours of neighbourhood teams and to bring them out of the margins of policing in London."
On each borough a neighbourhood inspector would become a "sheriff", he said, adding: "I will hold them to account for reductions in crime and rises in the number of people who are brought to book."
Byrne denied his plans would reduce the skill set of officers investigating crimes or amounted to an attack on the role of detectives.
But Deputy Commissioner Craig Mackey admitted that constables on neighbourhood teams would have to undergo training to learn the skills of detectives. "We want all our new recruits to know that they will all be investigators," he said.
Stephen Greenhalgh, the deputy mayor for policing, said priority crimes such as rape, gang violence and organised crime would still be tackled by central squads.
The decision to cut the number of police stations open to the public comes after research showed the public were not visiting front desks to report crimes. Figures show that 80% of visits to front counters in police stations are to 71 out of 135 counters and that fewer than 50 crimes a night are reported in person at police stations.
The mayor's office is expected to announce later on Wednesday which 65 police stations are to close. The plans are to go out to public consultation for eight weeks.
Greenhalgh said the public would be able to meet police officers in other places such as supermarkets or libraries. The use of post offices as a base for officers was being pursued, he said.
"The Post Office has benefited from a lot of capital money from government to keep branches open. We are in the process of developing a pilot scheme to see if it would work with the post office counter providing a fixed point on the high street where people could hand in lost property, could carry out transactions like purchasing licences and for very simple crime reporting."
The plans also include cutting the number of senior officers from 37 to 26, and reducing the supervision of officers as a result.
Scotland Yard is already in the process of cutting 1,500 staff posts from within the force.