Scandal-hit Met Police receiving less than half of applications it needs ‘but does not know why’

‘Is it because of concerns around the Met as an organisation and culture and standards? We do not know yet’

The Metropolitan Police is receiving less than half of the applications it needs for uniformed PCs (Getty Images)

The Metropolitan Police is receiving less than half of the applications it says it needs but “doesn’t know why’, the London Assembly has been told.

Robin Wilkinson, the Met’s chief of corporate services, said the volume of applications the force was currently getting for uniformed PC roles was substantially too low – but that it was too early to say whether this was down to concerns about culture and standards in the scandal-hit force.

He told the London Assembly police and crime committee: “Recruitment is very challenged at the moment.

“The volume of applications we are getting is currently too low to meet the growth we need.

“We have regrettably moved away from London residency requirement because of the volume of recruits we are having.

“That policy change has only been in place for five or six weeks but so far that policy change has not resulted in a substantial increase in the volume of applications we are getting for our uniformed PC roles.

“Those volumes are currently substantially too low – less than 50 per cent of the volume of applications we need.

“We don’t know why yet. We don’t know is that because policing across the country is recruiting in such big numbers, are we reaching saturation levels?

“Or is it because of concerns around the Met as an organisation and culture and standards? We do not know yet.”

Mr Wilkinson said it was “too early to tell” whether the recent string of scandals to have plagued the Met had impacted recruitment of women or those from ethnic minority backgrounds, but the signs suggest not.

“It’s too early to tell whether there’s any lasting damage through all of the difficulties of the last few months,” he said.

“What we haven’t seen is any adjustment in the makeup of the recruits.

“Our numbers are lower, but we are not seeing substantially fewer women apply or substantially fewer Black, Asian or mixed heritage recruits apply…but we are looking at it and it’s a worry.”

The Metropolitan Police has been dogged by scandals in recent years including the murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard by serving officer Wayne Couzens in March 2021 (Family handout/PA)

The Met is currently attempting to recruit an additional 1,800 officers by March 2023 as part of the Police Uplift programme.

To do this, it has temporarily lifted its London residency criteria, meaning those who have not lived or studied in the capital can apply.

The force has recruited almost 4,000 new officers since the start of 2019.

Mr Wilkinson admitted more needed to be done to root out sexism and racism in the Met.

“A substantial amount of work has been put in to changing the culture but the issues that have been coming forward are of course serious,” he said.

“Sexism is regrettably rife in this country and it is imported into policing and it’s imported into the Met Police. We need to do more to root it out and to stop it happening.

“We have to tackle racism that is still too endemic in society and therefore will be imported into policing and we need to do more to root it out.

“Am I saying that it’s stopping recruiting? I can’t tell you that at the moment. It must be a problem – and every time we’ve got people talking about a toxic culture, every time we’ve got a television programme talking about culture then it’s going to make it harder and we’ve got to work doubly hard to try to respond to that.”

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) last month revealed Met officers exchanged racist, sexist and homophobic messages including references to rape which they defended as “banter”.

The police watchdog said it believed the messages, which were exchanged between 2016 and 2018 and mostly involved officers based at Charing Cross police station, were “not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’.”

Metropolitan Police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said mayor of London Sadiq Khan ‘left her no choice’ but to resign (Getty Images)

Home secretary Priti Patel said the “sickening” messages showed a “failure of leadership”, while mayor of London Sadiq Khan put Met commissioner Dame Cressida Dick “on notice”.

The Met chief eventually resigned, saying it was “quite clear the mayor no longer has sufficient confidence in my leadership” and that he “left me no choice but to step aside”.

The force has been dogged by other scandals over recent years, including the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by serving Met officer Wayne Couzens in March 2021 and the subsequent policing of a vigil held in her memory.

The murder of sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry in June 2020 also brought controversy for the Met. Their mother, Mina Smallman, claimed police treated their disappearance and deaths less urgently than if they had been white.

PCs Deniz Jaffer and Jamie Lewis were then jailed for two years and nine months each in December 2021 for taking photographs of the sisters’ bodies and sharing them with friends and colleagues on WhatsApp.