Wealthy landlords are considering funding Britain’s largest private police force to patrol London’s most exclusive streets.
The London estates reportedly had talks with Essex-based security company TM Eye on the possibility of hiring the firm as an alternative to police officers.
Belgravia’s posh residents have been increasingly targeted in muggings, and robberies have more than doubled in the area.
The news comes as a third of bobbies on the beat were axed in three years amid a surge in violent crime – despite government promises to protect frontline policing.
TM Eye already has several uniformed ‘bobbies’ on streets in Belgravia but The Duke of Westminster’s estate was reportedly thinking of hiring the firm in full scale.
Wealthy landlords are considering funding Britain’s largest private police force to patrol London’s most exclusive streets. Pictured: Police on patrol in an area where a private force may be hired
If the plan goes ahead, it would be the largest private force in Britain.
TM Eye has access to the Police National Computer and can launch prosecutions.
The Sunday Times reported the Duke of Westminster’s estate held talks with the private firm, however Grosvenor said it was not pursuing and was not in talks with any private firms.
David McKelvey, TM Eye’s managing director and former MET detective chief, said to the Sunday Times: ‘We are talking to the big estate owners with a view to their coming on board and funding it through a small amount on their service charge.
‘If we can get them, or the councils, on board there is no reason you couldn’t have hundreds of officers.’
This wouldn’t be the first time local estates have turned to private firms to solve its policing problems.
The rural area of Martock in Somerset hired Atlas UK Security Services in Yeovil to patrol in the evenings.
Sussex is the police force with the fewest police on the beat per head of population in Sussex, where just 8.3 neighbourhood officers patrol 100,000 people. Pictured: Sussex HQ
The possibility of privately hired forces comes as more than 7000 neighbourhood police officers have left the force or been assigned to other duties since March 2015, according to The Sunday Times.
The number of police community support officers has also reportedly fallen by 18 per cent.
But officers assigned to administrative roles have multiplied by a quarter in three years- despite government pledges to protect frontline policing.
Sussex is the police force with the fewest police on the beat per head of population, where just 8.3 neighbourhood officers patrol 100,000 people.
Villagers in Martock in Somerset have hired a security firm to patrol at night due to the lack of a police presence.
Lord Stevens, the former Scotland Yard commissioner, said the findings were ‘incredibly alarming’.
He said: ‘If the increase in violent crime carries on escalating, you are going to get a very dangerous tipping point where there is no control, and it is a very difficult thing to bring back.
‘I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet and, God willing, we won’t,’ he added.
The Home Office said: ‘Decisions about frontline policing, and how resources are best deployed, are for chief constables and democratically accountable police and crime commissioners.’
In England and Wales murders leapt from 539 to 736 in the three years to March 2018 and violent deaths in London this year have now reached 100.
In terms of knife crime, police in England and Wales recorded 39,598 offences involving blades in the year ending December 2017, a 22% increase compared with the previous year.