Met Police could cut more officers if Home Office funding falls short

The Metropolitan Police could face further staffing cuts if the impending funding settlement from the Home Office is inadequate, officials have warned.

The force has already identified a £20mn budget gap in 2026-27 that they “intend to bridge through non-workforce efficiencies”. But the Met Police’s chief finance officer has suggested that they may need to look at staffing and recruitment changes if an expected funding uplift from the Home Office does not materialise in the provisional police settlement.

“If the income that we’ve assumed doesn’t come through, then we need to look at where and when we can be more efficient,” Dan Worsley told the London Assembly Budget and Performance Committee on Wednesday 10 December.

“We’ve done a lot of work on efficiencies and I’m really comfortable that the £20mn is a reasonable figure from quite a small part of our budget in terms of non-worker force efficiencies.

“If the income doesn’t come through at that level or doesn’t come through recurrently, we’ll have to work with City Hall and MOPAC [Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime] to look at what the impact might be on our workforce and our ability to recruit to the levels of attrition in order to protect the workforce.”

He added: “We’ve done some work behind the scenes on scenario planning about what that might look like. But until we get the provisional police settlement and we’ve worked through that and had conversations with colleagues at MOPAC and operational colleagues, we don’t know what that will look like.”

Worsley said the force was “full throatedly” pushing ministers for more funding in addition to what is received in the settlement.

There has already been significant concern around a drop in officer numbers despite a manifesto pledge from Sir Sadiq Khan to increase the number by 1,300 by the end of his current term.

In May 2024, following the last election, there were 33,766 police officers, but the Met has forecast there will just be 31,258 by March 2026.

Kaya Comer-Schwartz, the Mayor’s deputy for policing, said the Met has prioritised neighbourhood policing to make sure the force can effectively carry out its duties. This has resulted in a drop in overall officer numbers.

“We are being flexible within the Met, civilianising officers in the back office where we can and moving them out to neighbourhoods,” she added, claiming there was no more “low hanging fruit” that the force could cut to make savings.

She said staff were leaving the force “naturally” through retirement or to work in other forces. The Met Police’s attrition rate — the percentage of employees who leave the organisation over a specific period — is around seven per cent, which compares favourably to other forces around the country.

“We’re dealing with a deficit created by the previous government,” Comer-Schwartz said. “There’s no more low hanging fruit — we’ve had to work through a funding gap of £450mn by decreasing the amount of officers overall but uplifting neighbourhood teams by making sure officers in back office roles have been redeployed.”

Last year the Met was forced to make a number of controversial decisions as it sought to make up its funding gap, including reducing the number of police front counters in the capital.

The Home Office was contacted for comment.

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