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Information has revealed that none of the Basic Command Units (BCUs) in London, including the North West covering Harrow, have met the target response time for significant (S) Grade 999 calls in the past three months.

Grade S calls are calls that require a degree of importance or urgency associated with the initial police action, but an emergency response is not required.

Despite the target response time being 60 minutes, the average response time across all BCUs was 2 hours and 2 minutes between December 2022 and February 2023.

The figures, discovered by Liberal Democrat London, show that at three BCUs, the average response time was over 2 hours, and at two BCUs, it was over 3 hours, with one BCU in east London recording a wait time of almost 5 hours for a response to a grade S call.

For the North West BCU covering Barnet, Brent and Harrow, the average response time for S Grade calls was over 2 hours.

Caroline Pidgeon AM, a member of the London Liberal Democrat Assembly and a spokesperson for police and crime, expressed concern about the findings, saying: “These figures on S Grade call response times are truly shocking and many Londoners take them for granted.” they will find deeply disturbing.

“It shows us that not only are the target times being missed, but in the vast majority of counties they are nowhere close to being met.

“The fact that someone in East London who has experienced a robbery or hate crime has to wait almost 5 hours for an answer is simply not acceptable.

“In 2018, Sadiq Khan admitted there were ‘some specific response time issues related to the launch of the new Basic Command Units’, yet here we are five years later and every BCU is missing Grade S target times, most of them by a country mile.

“It is quite clear that we need a return to proper community policing with more officers and response teams in the boroughs to help Londoners when they need them most.”