Wandsworth Council to Launch Integrated Enforcement Team with 25 New Police Officers

Wandsworth Council to Launch Integrated Enforcement Team with 25 New Police Officers

Wandsworth Council is set to bolster its crime-fighting capabilities with the introduction of 25 new dedicated Metropolitan Police officers and the formation of an Integrated Enforcement Team (IET).

The significant investment, approved by the Enforcement Overview and Scrutiny Sub-Committee, aims to create a more coordinated, visible, and intelligence-led approach to tackling crime and anti-social behaviour across the borough. The new policing team will comprise 22 Police Constables and 3 Sergeants, who will be deployed under the council's tactical direction, working in tandem with existing council enforcement services and the new IET. This initiative is a key part of the administration's manifesto pledge to enhance community safety.

The Integrated Enforcement Team will combine police and council powers, aiming to provide a visible, intelligence-led, and community-focused service. The IET will focus on tackling crime, anti-social behaviour and the issues residents and businesses say affect confidence, livelihoods and quality of life. Specifically, the proposal mentions addressing ASB, drug-related harm, e-bike misuse, violence against women and girls, and other matters affecting residents' sense of safety.

The new officers will be deployed flexibly across the borough and their work will be informed by locally agreed priorities through partnership arrangements with the Council. The Equality Impact and Needs Analysis (EINA) for the proposal acknowledges the risk of actual or perceived disproportionality in police interactions and the use of police powers. Mitigation strategies include clear initial priorities, regular engagement with communities that have lower confidence in policing, accessible information about the role of the additional officers, and clear routes for feedback and complaints. The council also notes that Intelligence-led deployment could place greater focus on communities where more incidents are reported, while overlooking groups or areas where residents are less confident about reporting concerns.

Councillor [Name withheld], the Cabinet Member for Enforcement, stated that the initiative aligns with the administration's commitment to invest in policing and address residents' concerns about crime. The funding for the new officers will primarily come from Neighbourhood Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) receipts. The report states that the actual expenditure in 2026/27 will depend on the timing of the recruitment and will be funded in full by NCIL receipts. For future years, it is noted that future ongoing costs have been incorporated within the Spending Review analysis. While the initial funding is heavily reliant on CIL, the report also mentions additional positive General Fund revenue budget variations of £300,000 in 2026/27 and £4.9m in 2027/28 and a full year, suggesting a broader budget allocation.

Early indications suggest the first deployment of the new police officers could be in quarter four of this financial year. The full establishment of the Integrated Enforcement Team (IET) is part of an ongoing enforcement transformation and a borough-wide enforcement review is underway, with detailed design and scoping being sourced externally.

The 25 dedicated Metropolitan Police officers will be deployed under the Council's tactical direction. While they will remain under Metropolitan Police command and terms of employment, their day-to-day tasking would be managed collaboratively. A Head of Service will act as the local authority's lead tasking manager and will ultimately work with the chief inspector and inspectors to make sure that with their intelligence piece, they're deployed where they need to go. A tasking meeting will be held where the officer will chair it and identify where they're going to today, tomorrow, next week.

Members of the subcommittee expressed general support for the investment, with questions focusing on how improvements would be tracked and the integration of the new officers with existing teams. The council plans to implement a really robust range of uh key performance indicators that will allow us to track everything from numbers of service requests from a local authority office perspective numbers of fines through to numbers of patrols number of operations around those arrests that the police will will be able to take for us. The full suite of KPIs is currently being developed.

The council's plans for the new enforcement team and the investment in policing are part of a broader strategy to create safer and cleaner neighbourhoods for Wandsworth residents. Further details on the proposal can be found in the Public reports pack.