Police in Havering have announced today that additional police patrols by emergency response team officers in Hornchurch town centre were launched last week.

The additional patrols will allow officers to respond to emergency calls in Hornchurch and the surrounding areas faster while providing a high visibility presence to deter criminal activity and reassure residents. The team will be bolstered by additional fleet vehicles in July and in October.

Policing in London falls within the Mayor of London’s responsibilities and Julia Lopez MP has called for additional police presence in Hornchurch, as a location with a significant night-time economy, for many years. In 2021, Julia wrote to the Mayor to outline her disappointment that Havering towns did not feature within the list of 19 town centres across London to benefit from additional town centre teams.

This had also been a regular theme in her engagement with the local BCU Commander in the intervening period, particularly earlier this year following a spate of knife offences in Hornchurch Town Centre and at Havering College, and the Commander advised that he had asked the then incoming Neighbourhood Superintendent to focus upon town centres. You can read more on those discussions here. The Hornchurch & Upminster MP also addressed her broader concerns that outer-London borough’s like Havering do not receive sufficient police resources from the Met to the Met Commissioner directly in their April meeting in which she called for the retention of Hornchurch Police Station under the Met’s ownership. More on this meeting can be found here.

Julia welcomes that her requests for additional resourcing in Hornchurch have been heeded.