Londoners waiting 3 hours for police to respond to emergencies

Londoners are waiting an average of three hours for the police to arrive at an emergency, new figures exposed by Lib Dem Assembly Member, Caroline Pidgeon, have revealed.

Over the past two years, police waiting times across London have skyrocketed. In one London borough, the response times were 10 hours.

Victims of crime are waiting three times longer in London than in the rest of the country.

Across our city people don’t feel safe anymore. And these victims aren’t numbers - they’re real people who are left alone, afraid for hours.

Pidgeon said of the figures that she extracted from London Mayor Sadiq Khan through written questions: “It was shocking to uncover these response times, and the Mayor can and must do more to support victims of crime. It’s heartbreaking to hear how residents are now waiting hours, alone and afraid after a crime.”

The figures relate to so-called ‘S-grade’ calls, otherwise known as ‘low urgency’ calls that cover things like road traffic collisions, hate crimes, anti-social behaviour and burglaries.

The worst response times were found in the boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Havering, and Redbridge where the average response time was four hours and 42 minutes. But Wandsworth came a close second with Kingston, Merton and Richmond with an average response time of over two hours.