Lynne Featherstone

Met with local Haringey police commander, Simon O’Brien this morning.

Major success of the day is his agreement, if suitable premises can be found and the Met Estate Office agrees – that we can locate the Highgate Safer Neighbourhood Team in Highgate itself. He even suggested that I should go out with local officers to check out locations – so will do as soon as possible.

This is all part of the wider Met Estates strategy – and my bottom line in Hornsey and Wood Green (agreed by Simon O’Brien) is that nothing goes before there is something else that has been accepted by the public in its place. It’s all very well wanting to update buildings – and Lord knows there are buildings that are out of the ark in terms of what is needed for police stations – but where police are stationed is absolutely crucial to public confidence and being part of the community. We don’t want any police stations closed just on the promise that a new replacement will come along some time in future – with all the risk that you end up with nothing which that brings.

We move on to staffing levels for the Safer Neighbourhood teams. Although I hear some ‘you never see one’ comments – these are much less than before. However there are a few missing from the full complement and Simon says that his target for full complement is probably by October – but the outer limit set by Sir Ian Blair (London’s top policeman) is end December.

The part of our conversation he enjoys the most is when I ask about local crime statistics etc – and whist not everything is perfect it is clear that the police have had phenomenal success in terms of the increased rate of detection. In the end, it’s detection that it the first step towards conviction!

Also today had a long, long surgery meeting constituents with their individual issues. Off for a break myself shortly, and as usual during August I’ll be largely taking a break from blogging, though this year will put up one or two more contemplative pieces during the month.