Anti-terror response puts 'huge strain' on policing, top officer warns

Terror response: Armed policemen stand by a cordon outside Parsons Green station
REUTERS
Fiona Simpson22 September 2017

Britain’s huge counter-terrorism response has put an "unsustainable strain" on every day policing, a top officer has warned.

Sara Thornton, the head of the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC), says the efforts in the wake of five terror attacks in Britain has led to a spike in crime levels and wider policing budgets being slashed.

Hundreds of specialist counter-terrorism officers have been assigned to massive inquiries after four atrocities devastated the capital and one claimed the lives of 22 victims in Manchester.

Ms Thornton's stark warning came in an assessment published six months to the day since the Westminster attack.

Top officer: Sara Thornton
PA

She said: "Every time there's a terror attack, we mobilise specialist officers and staff to respond, but the majority of the officers and staff responding come from mainstream policing. This puts extra strain on an already-stretched service.

"In the response to the Manchester attack, three quarters of the resources deployed came from mainstream policing.

"This disrupts the daily work of policing on which the public rely, it creates backlogs of incidents in our control rooms and results in a slower response to the public.”

Armed police outside the Palace of Westminster following an attack on Parliament
Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

The former Thames Valley chief constable said staffing levels had dropped to the same as those seen in 1985 and added that crime had risen by 10 per cent in just one year.

She added: "The current flat cash settlement for forces announced in 2015 is no longer enough."

The Government is boosting its total spending on counter-terrorism by 30 per cent, from £11.7 billion to £15.1 billion.

But Ms Thornton argues that the amount allocated from that budget to policing, which currently totals around £700 million a year, is set to be cut by 7.2 per cent in the next three years.

London Bridge and Borough Market terrorist attack

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"When the volume and nature of threat is growing alarmingly, that is a real concern," she says.

Ms Thornton delivered the warning in a blog published today, a week on from the Parsons Green attack, the fifth major terrorist incident in the UK this year.

She described how an effective response to an attack is just one part of the counter-terrorism effort, and will "never be as good as preventing them in the first place".

She wrote: "Fewer officers and Police Community Support Officers will cut off the intelligence that is so crucial to preventing attacks.

"Withdrawal from communities risks undermining their trust in us, at a time when we need people to have the confidence to share information with us."

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