Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to increase the number of police officers in Hounslow.

The Government is determined to tackle serious violence by combining tough enforcement action to get dangerous weapons off the streets with programmes that steer young people away from crime.

Between 2019 and the end of the 2022/23 financial year, we will have provided The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime with up to £33.7 million for London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), which brings together local partners to identify and tackle the drivers of serious violence.

The VRU works closely with all 32 boroughs, including Hounslow, to deliver interventions that aim to prevent vulnerable young people from engaging in, or falling victim to, violent crime. The VRU’s work in Hounslow includes funding programmes to help vulnerable young people achieve at school, including sports-based mentoring activities, as well as the PEACE detached youth work programme in Hounslow, which delivers outreach support to young people in areas affected by county-lines related activity.

From 2019 to the end of the 2022/23 financial year we are providing the Metropolitan Police Force, who serve Hounslow, with over £50m to deliver targeted enforcement action to tackle serious violence. Our ‘Grip’ programme uses a highly data-driven process to direct more visible police patrols to streets and neighbourhoods most affected by violence, which has included providing additional patrols in key areas of Hounslow. It also suppresses serious violence by using data to identify the top violence hotspots and target police activity in those areas. This work is complemented by ‘problem-solving’ policing interventions aimed at tackling the long-term causes of serious violence affecting specific locations.

We are also investing £200 million in the 10-year Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), which identifies what works to divert children and young people away from serious violence. The YEF have invested in three projects in Hounslow: £28,500 into the Horn of Africa Youth Association, which delivers a 'Youth Empowerment Project’; £35,000 into the Hounslow Action for Youth Association, which delivered a ‘Young Women’s Writing Project’; and a pilot project to train youth workers to deliver Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

The deployment of officers remains an operational decision for Chief Constables. As part of the Government’s commitment to recruit 20,000 police officers in England and Wales by March 2023, as at 30 June 2022, the Metropolitan Police Service has recruited 2,952 additional uplift officers against a total three-year allocation of 4,557 officers.