New Met for London

SENT ON BEHALF OF SUPERINTENDENT JACKSON

Dear Resident 

We held our Community Crime-Fighting event on Tuesday 28th October 2025 at Leyton Great Hall. The purpose of the event was to hear about crime fighting in your area and to explain the next stage of the New Met For London plan. The event also provided opportunity for residents to provide feedback.

We have reviewed the priorities feedback from the event and implemented the following as a result to seek improvements in the key areas of concern raised.

Communication & Engagement – Our teams deliver weekly engagement activities. These sessions allow officers to listen, act, and reassure residents face-to-face with hundreds of events per month.

We encourage the use of Met Engage so we can inform you of what we are doing in your area, and for you to be able to tell us what concerns you the most. Membership across Waltham Forest is growing.

Drug related antisocial behaviour – The issues highlighted at the event have all been reviewed by The MET and Waltham Forest Council to develop plans to deal with the matters raised. We use analytical data to focus high visibility, covert, and specialist patrols in hot spot areas. We continue to encourage the use of ASB Warnings, Community Protection Warnings, Community Protection Notices and Criminal Behaviour Orders to reduce ASB offences. 

Police Resources and Visibility – We’ve increased the number of Safer neighbourhood officers in Waltham Forest making policing more visible and accessible. Our neighbourhood teams have started new shift patterns this month which provide better coverage of our neighbourhood teams at peak demand times, allowing increased visibility and more effective use of our resources.

Chingford Front office - The front counter at Chingford Police Station will be closing.  

This has been part of a series of tough choices the Met is undertaking in order to cover a £260m funding shortfall. 

There are still many ways to report crimes and ask for police help. You will still be able to report crimes online, or by dialling 101 if it is not an emergency. If it is an emergency, always call 999 and ask for the police.  All these services remain available 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and are how 90% of crimes are reported. 

Violence Against Women & Girls (VAWG) – We continue to increase our focus on VAWG in Waltham Forest and we conduct the following operations regularly:

Op Vigilant – Officers trained in behavioural detection are deployed in plain clothes and in uniform to prevent & detect offences.

Walk, Talk and Do – Patrols conducted with female members of the public giving them the opportunity to point out places they don’t feel safe. We then utilise this in Op Verona deployments. Op Verona deployments are patrols conducted in Hotspot patrols raised by the public, highlighted via intelligence and crime data.

Thank you for joining us on Met Engage, which was introduced to help us do exactly that.

Wishing you a wonderful holiday season and warmest wishes for the New Year.

Superintendent Sarah Jackson.