London’s robbery rates are “too high”, admits Khan

Robbery in London has increased by 57% since the mayor took office in 2016, reports Noah Vickers, reporter for Local Democracy

Sadiq Khan has admitted the number of robberies in London is “too high” as he launched a new Robbery Reduction Partnership to tackle the problem.

The partnership, which held its first meeting on Monday, brings together the Metropolitan Police, the Safer Business Network and the Mayor’s Violence Reduction Unit, among other groups.

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics show that robbery in London has increased by 57% since Khan took office in 2016.

While 21,604 crimes were registered in the Capital between April 2015 and March 2016, the figure was 33,951 in the twelve months of 2023.

The increase across England and Wales between the same two periods was slightly higher, however, at 59%.

Khan, who joined police officers on a patrol through Covent Garden on Tuesday, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that he wanted to be “tough” on the “complex causes of crime” but also on crime itself.

“That means not just revitalized neighborhood teams (of police officers) … but also talking and listening to those who have skin in the game,” he said.

“This means business, it means the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service), youth offending teams, Transport for London, councils, the City of London Police and many others to see what we can do by working together to reduce robbery.

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“Robbery is too big – it’s growing all over the country, it’s grown in London. We know that a large number of these robberies are of mobile phones, (stolen through) burglaries. We saw real progress last year with those luxury watches (being stolen).

“So this (work) aims to do two things – one is to make people feel safer and two is to make sure people are safer.”

The Met said in January that two recent operations in and around Westminster had led to significant falls in watch robberies.

The two operations – carried out in late 2022 and 2023 in South Kensington, Chelsea, Soho and Mayfair – saw undercover officers deployed as potential targets wearing expensive watch brands. The criminals who tried to rob the watches from the street were then caught by other undercover officers nearby.

In a speech in March, Khan said the rising cost of living had contributed to an increase in certain forms of “acquisitive” crime, such as shoplifting, burglary and theft.

Last October, the Mayor and Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley called a meeting of the world’s leading mobile phone companies to ask them to commit to “engineering” mobile phone theft.

Khan argued that it should be possible to reduce the incentives to steal phones by improving security measures on the devices – making them harder to unlock and sell.

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