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Community Support Officers: Greater London

Volume 461: debated on Wednesday 20 June 2007

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how (1) many police community support officers are assigned to each ward in each London borough; (143019)

(2) how many police community support officers have been assigned to each London borough without safer neighbourhood teams;

(3) how many police community support officers have been (a) requested by and (b) assigned to each London borough.

Data on police strength are not available at the ward level. The available data for police community support officer (PCSO) strength for each London borough are by basic command unit (BCU) of the Metropolitan Police Service (MRS). These data are given in the table. The boundaries of London boroughs are coterminous with those of the BCUs within the MPS.

Every BCU in the MPS has safer neighbourhood teams (SNTs). There are 630 SNTs in the MPS covering all 624 wards across the MPS. Every team has at least one sergeant, two constables and three PCSOs.

The number of PCSOs requested by each London borough is not collected centrally within police personnel statistics. The number of PCSOs assigned to each London borough is available in the form previously described, and is given in the following table.

Police community support officer strength for Metropolitan Police Service by basic command unit, as at 31 January 20071

Basic command unit

PCSO strength

Kensington and Chelsea

104

Westminster

300

Camden

62

Hammersmith and Fulham

67

Hackney

67

Tower Hamlets

85

Waltham Forest

67

Redbridge

80

Havering

69

Newham

88

Barking and Dagenham

63

Lambeth

101

Southwark

75

Islington

59

Lewisham

69

Bromley

109

Harrow

66

Brent

64

Greenwich

77

Bexley

81

Barnet

92

Richmond upon Thames

64

Hounslow

77

Kingston upon Thames

53

Merton

71

Wandsworth

76

Ealing

77

Hillingdon

74

Enfield

94

Haringey

66

Croydon

109

Sutton

64

Borough total

2,668

1 Table has been provided by the Metropolitan Police Service and the Home Office Police Productivity Unit.