Home Office insists Metropolitan Police budget will be protected as force 'faces £400m cuts'

Comes on top of £600m worth of cuts that have already been implemented

The Met has made more than £600m of savings since 2013 (Getty)

The Metropolitan Police will not have to find cuts worth hundreds of millions of pounds over the next three years, the Home Office has announced, following calls for the force’s budget to be protected in the wake of two terror attacks.

The announcement signals an apparent climbdown by the Government after the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, earlier warned it was facing £400m in cuts to meet a budget shortfall by the end of the decade, as the budget remains flat while costs rise.

That comes on top of £600m worth of cuts that have already been implemented.

Mr Khan urged the Prime Minister to reverse cuts to policing during a visit to the scene of the terror attack in Finsbury Park.

“My message to the Government is, the plans you have to make the further cuts of £400 million: don’t do it,” he said.

Cressida Dick, the Met Commissioner, also voiced concerns, telling the BBC her officers “need the resources to do the job”, while her predecessor Lord Blair sounded a similar warning.

Alarm at the projected cuts prompted the Home Office to rush out a statement.

A spokesperson said: “The Government is not reducing the Metropolitan Police’s budget by £400m.

“Police spending was protected in the 2015 Spending Review, and the Met has had a broadly flat cash budget since then including precept – in line with every other force in the country.”

The total number of police officers, PCSOs and other police staff in the Met has dropped from a high of 55,322 in March 2010 to 43,607 in April this year.

Commissioner Dick revealed she was in talks with the Government over cuts the force was expecting to make, which come at a particularly busy time for officers in the capital who are dealing with three terror attacks in as many months as well as the fire at Grenfell Tower.

“We're stretched and I'm talking with the mayor and the government about the resources that we need,” the country's most senior police officer said.

She added: “We undoubtedly need a very capable police service in the future for all the reasons people can see.”

A third senior figure with detailed knowledge of policing in the capital, Former Met Police Commissioner Lord Blair, also warned about prospective budget cuts.

“Looking at what is happening, the idea of continually cutting the police services budget seem just an absurdity at this point,” he said.

“I think the crucial point now is to understand that the cuts being considered, certainly for the Met, need reconsideration.

“As far as I understand it they're supposed to lose a further £400m by 2021, on top of £600m in the last few years.

“That means that the Met must be a quarter less in size than when I left.”

But the Home Office insisted funding remained “stable” and that no police force is seeing a reduction in their funding compared with 2015/16.

A spokesperson added: “We expect the Met, along with all other forces, to manage their costs within their broadly flat cash budgets by improving efficiency and productivity.”

Last month, in the immediate aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing, the chair of the Police Federation, Steve White, said police “simply do not have the resources” to manage a heightened national level of alertness without help from the army.