2022-2023 MOPAC Annual Report

The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) is led by the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Sophie Linden. Its Chief Executive Officer is Diana Luchford CB.

MOPAC has five directorates:

Commissioning and Partnerships

MOPAC spends around £70m per year commissioning services that help victims of crime, tackle the behaviour of perpetrators and reduce reoffending, overseeing a further £20m funding through the Mayor’s Domestic Abuse Safe Accommodation project in partnership with the GLA. 

Strategy and Oversight

Helping the Mayor to hold the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to account for delivering reform on behalf of Londoners, producing our strategies, gathering and analysing data on policing, crime and community safety; and working with London’s communities.

Finance and Corporate Services

Agreeing and overseeing the £4bn Metropolitan Police Budget and the budget allocated to MOPAC, ensuring that Londoners’ money is spent wisely.

HR, Private Office and Secretariat

Helping us to do our work in supporting the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime and discharging democratic accountabililty. In 2022/23, MOPAC answered 4,825 pieces of correspondence, 659 Mayor’s Questions and 53 Freedom of Information requests.

Directorate of Audit, Risk and Assurance

Providing a specialist audit service for MOPAC, the Metropolitan Police and other GLA Group organisations, making sure that the highest standards of integrity and efficiency are maintained.

The Mayor’s Police and Crime Plan 2022-25 was published at the end of March 2022 following consultation with more than 4,000 Londoners, justice agencies, partner organisations, community and voluntary groups. The four priorities of the Plan are:

Reducing and preventing violence – preventing and reducing violence affecting young people; making London a city in which women and girls are safer and feel safer; tackling the harm caused by drugs; reducing reoffending by the most violent and high-risk groups; preventing hate crime; and working together to prevent terrorism and violent extremism.

Increasing trust and confidence – increasing public trust in the MPS and reducing gaps in confidence between different groups; ensuring that the MPS engages with Londoners and treats them fairly; and ensuring that the MPS, borough councils and all community safety partners respond to neighbourhood crimes such as burglary and anti-social behaviour.

Better supporting victims – improving the service and support that victims receive from the MPS and the criminal justice service; working to ensure victims receive a better criminal justice response and outcome; and reducing the number of repeat victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence.

Protecting people from being exploited or harmed – reducing the number of young people and adults who are criminally exploited or harmed; keeping young people in the justice system supported and safe; and keeping people safe online.

This document provides commentary on how these priorities have been delivered in 2022/23. Please see the links at the end of this document for further data and information on performance over this period.

In 2022/23, the Mayor continued to spearhead efforts to reduce and prevent violence in London in all its forms. The MOPAC-convened Reducing Teenage Homicide Partnership (now called the Reducing Homicide Partnership) continued to bring together the MPS and other partners to co-ordinate efforts to reduce and prevent serious violence. Homicides and teenage homicides in London all decreased in 2022/23.

• While crime overall increased in 2022/23 compared to the previous 12 months (+5%), it remained 4% lower than it was prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (12 months to March 2019). Londoners’ fear of crime reduced by 12 percentage points in 2022/23.
• MOPAC continued to make record investment in policing from City Hall, and in 2022/23 officer numbers reached a record high in London. At the end of Q4 2022/23, the Metropolitan Police Workforce consisted of:
  • 34,503 Officers
  • 1,551 Volunteers & Special constables
  • 1,204 PCSOs
  • 10,316 Staff
• The Mayor continued to prioritise tackling the causes of violence through the preventative work of his Violence Reduction Unit (VRU). With the Mayor’s support and investment, the VRU has funded targeted interventions for more than 150,000 young people over the last two years. This includes measures to support families, funding to keep young people in education, investment in the vital role played by youth workers and mentors, and support and resources for communities to tackle the issues affecting their neighbourhoods.
• The Mayor continued investment into the use of GPS tagging to cut crime and keep Londoners safe. Since the City Hall pilot launched in February 2019, more than 500 tagged offenders across London who have breached their licence conditions have been recalled to prison – 365 were knife crime offenders and 142 were domestic abuse offenders. This includes 145 cases where GPS data was used to evidence otherwise hidden behaviour and confirm that tagged offenders had breached their conditions, such as entering a monitored exclusion zone.
• MOPAC’s Evidence and Insight Unit published a Serious Youth Violence Problem Profile - one of the largest products of its type ever published – providing new data and insights into a wide range of topics including trends, drivers associated with violence, public perceptions, as well as the individual characteristics of victims and suspects. The Problem Profile – available to download on the MOPAC website, is a valuable resource to inform police and partners’ future investment and commissioning of interventions and activity to tackle exploitation and violence.
• In June 2022 the Mayor published his refreshed tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy for London after extensive consultation with Londoners, victims of crime, partner agencies and community and voluntary groups. Backed with £117m funding, the Strategy champions a public health approach and encourages everyone in London to play their part in ending the epidemic of violence against women and girls.
• The Mayor’s #HaveAWord campaign, which asks men of all ages to reflect on how they can help tackle violence against women and girls, continued to make a strong impact in 2022/23. The campaign video has been viewed more than 15 million times with 65 per cent of the social engagement by men. The campaign generated global interest and won the Bronze Glass, Lion for Change award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Polling has also shown that men who have seen the campaign are more likely to help tackle the issue – 85 per cent of men who have heard of the campaign said they would call out bad behaviour if they saw it.
• In November 2022 the Mayor launched a new toolkit to encourage and empower young Londoners to take a stand against VAWG. Developed by arts and education charity Tender, MOPAC, teachers, youth workers and partner organisations, the toolkit includes lesson plans, activities and resources on building healthy relationships, calling out sexism and discussions on attitudes and behaviours towards women and girls. The toolkit also features the video from the Mayor’s highly successful #HaveAWord campaign.
• The Mayor launched the second phase of his #FGMStopsHere campaign, featuring a series of new videos from FGM survivors, family members, medical professionals and campaigners from London’s East African and South Asian communities, highlighting the breadth and commitment of the movement within the community to end the practice and demonstrate the devastating impact FGM has on the lives and wellbeing of survivors and their families.
• The Mayor announced a new record £725,000 investment via his Shared Endeavour Fund for grassroots community groups to empower them to counter extremism, tackle the rise in hate crime offences and keep Londoners vulnerable to radicalisation safe. His continued investment in grassroots initiatives has already ensured that thousands of people in our city are actively engaged with projects and programmes working to strengthen our communities and encouraging everyone to reject extremist ideologies.
• In October 2022, MOPAC established and held the first London Drugs Forum (LDF). The LDF is a jointly chaired multi-agency partnership meeting – chaired by DMPC and the Mayor’s Senior Health Advisor - bringing together criminal justice and health agencies to develop an effective response to drug related harms and crimes across the city. The Forum is committed to the vision that there will be a reduction in both drug related crime and drug related deaths in London.
• MOPAC continued to champion Project ADDER in London, investing in partnership working with local councils and health services to help drug users from the criminal justice system into treatment and recovery services – helping address a known driver of crime and violence. Project ADDER began operating in Central East BCU in 2021/22 with £1m in funding from the Home Office.  In 2022/23, MOPAC provided £2m to expand Project ADDER to operate in Central South and Central North BCUs.

The Mayor continues to put victims at the heart of everything we do at MOPAC. Through the work of London’s Independent Victims’ Commissioner, Claire Waxman OBE and our extensive annual surveys of crime victims, we are continuing to develop and improve the wide range of support services we commission.

• The London Victim and Witness Service (LVWS) is the largest victims support service of its kind in England and Wales. It supported nearly 50,000 people in 2022/23.
• MOPAC also commissions wide variety of services for victims and survivors of violence against women and girls (VAWG). These include the London Havens (Sexual Assault Referral Centres); the Survivors Gateway & associated services for victims of sexual violence; the Ascent Advice Partnership supporting victims of domestic abuse; the London Advocacy and Holistic Wraparound Service for migrant victims of domestic abuse; CouRAGEus supporting young victims of VAWG; the London Stalking Support Service; and Prevention and Advice Community Training supporting victims of harmful practices.
• The CATCH Partnership, a MOPAC-funded group of specialist services who work together to support victims of hate crime, supported more than 3,000 people in 2022/23.
• A further £4million investment from City Hall to tackle VAWG was announced. This included a new £1million cost of living fund to immediately support vital VAWG services, in response to organisations tackling VAWG in London and across the country reporting that the cost of living crisis is disproportionately impacting women and girls, preventing them from being able to safely leave abusive relationships and situations. A further £3million has been allocated to support for local grassroots and community organisations in the capital over the next two years. This funding will help minority Black organisations, those with disabilities, neuro-diverse, LGBT+, older people and women who have no direct access to public funds or for whom mainstream provision is not always appropriate or safely accessible.
• MOPAC has led the way with Operation Soteria – a national operation to improve how the police and criminal justice system address serious sexual offending. This has led to 500 additional charges for rape and serious sexual offences in London compared to the last year.
• MOPAC continued to commission the London Children and Young People’s Victim and Witness Service, to provide ongoing and pre-trial support to young victims of crime. MOPAC has also strengthened services to support victims of child sexual abuse (CSA) across London in collaboration with NHS England. Following a successful pilot and MOPAC-led evaluation The Lighthouse relaunched in July 2022 and has gone on to support 256 survivors of CSA during 2022/23. Through new MOPAC investment the South West London CSA Hub is now aligned with the Children & Young People’s Havens service (SARC) to provide early emotional support. Across the four CSA Hubs in London over 200 survivors of CSA were supported in 2022/23.
• London Victims’ Commissioner, Claire Waxman OBE, hosted the first Victims’ Summit since the pandemic on 10th March, which brought together key criminal justice partners to better understand the complexities and fragmentation of the criminal justice system (CJS), and the experience of a victim navigating it. The audience heard first-hand from many victims throughout the day, who bravely shared their experiences with the MPS, CPS, courts and probation service.
• At the Victims’ Summit, the Mayor announced a new annual £3million investment to improve Met victim care. The funding is being used to provide a new, free phoneline for victims of crime to receive dedicated support and develop mechanisms to make it easier for victims to access key information about their case. The funds also support an increase the number of Met staff responsible for victim care and signposting victims to specialist support services.
• MOPAC continued to run its User Satisfaction Survey, capturing perceptions of 9,600 victims of crime about the service provided to them by the Metropolitan Police Service. In addition, the Telephone Digital Investigation Unit Survey (TDIU) surveyed around 10,000 victims of high-volume crime reporting either online or by telephone to the MPS TDIU, about their experience of reporting a single incident to the police. A new Victim Voice survey, focusing on victims of high-harm crimes, was launched to provide a further avenue for victims to anonymously share their views on the service they received.

Public protection is at the heart of the mission of policing and the partner agencies responsible for keeping us safe. However, the HMICFRS PEEL inspection identified disjointed public protection governance arrangements and a disappointingly slow rate of progress in implementing the force’s public protection improvement plan as causes for concern.

Further to this, Baroness Casey’s report also raised concerns about the MPS’ capability and capacity in Public Protection.

In the MPS ‘New Met for London’ Plan they have committed to transforming how they protect the public from harm, combatting violence against women and children. They will reform child protection to counter London’s most harmful predators. They also commit to strengthening local public protection teams, giving them more people, specialist training and better access to the Met’s proactive tools and tactics.  MOPAC continues to oversee the reform of public protection arrangements, including through the work of the London Policing Board.

Delivery highlights in this priority area in 2022/23 include:

• The Mayor, together with partners from London Probation, NHS and Lambeth Council, has brought together over £7.4 million of investment to fund a pan- London service for women at risk or in the criminal justice system which launched in December 2022. By addressing the underlying issues that have contributed to their offending, this service helps keep these women safe and reduce the risk of reoffending. Thanks to this investment, over 1,000 women in London will receive support in this year alone, including a diversion service operating in two MPS BCUs. This means women given conditional cautions can be diverted from police custody into holistic support to reduce further offending.  
• The MOPAC-led London Reducing Criminalisation of Looked-After Children and Care Leavers Protocol sets out the roles and responsibilities of each group involved in the care of looked-after children and care leavers in reducing their involvement in crime – because each and every one of these groups has their part to play in protecting these vulnerable young people from a life of crime. This includes children’s home carers, foster parents, police officers, the Crown Prosecution Service, health services and local authorities. In 2022/23, MOPAC funded the production of a new training video to further support partners to apply the protocol in their respective workplaces and began work with the MPS to dip sample reports from children’s homes to understand whether the protocol is being implemented.
• The Mayor announced £2 million of new funding for the London Gang Exit Service, supporting children and young people at risk of being exploited by criminal gangs. The programme, led by Safer London, provides specialist one-to-one specialist case work support and help for young Londoners aged 15 to 24. Between 2016 and April 2022, 430 young people received long term support through the London Gang Exit programme. Of these, 83 per cent significantly reduced their involvement with criminal gangs or ended their involvement completely.
• A report by the London Borough of Brent into the City Hall-funded County Lines Rescue and Response Project – which supports young people being criminally exploited by drugs gangs to escape - revealed that in the last year, nine out of 10 young Londoners supported by the project had either reduced or completely stopped their involvement in county lines.
• Through Operation Orochi and Operation Yamata, in 2022/23 the Metropolitan Police broke more than 1,000 drugs lines – either ‘County Lines’ between London and other parts of the country or lines operating internally within the city.
• MOPAC continues to fund Empower, a service primarily supporting girls and young women who are involved in or at risk of gang involvement or, at risk of sexual violence and exploitation. In 2022/23, Empower supported 92 young people and received 60 enquiries of which 40 were accepted and are now open cases. All cases were CSE related.
• New investments were made to help protect Londoners from fraud. £230k was allocated to Police Crime Prevention Initiative (PCPI) for the delivery of fraud prevention initiatives over a 12- month period starting in January 2023. A further £200K was allocated to the new London Cyber Resilience Centre – which works to support small and medium businesses and voluntary organisations to keep safe from online threats.
• In May 2022, the Mayor announced former Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Lord Charlie Falconer QC as Chair of the first ever London Drugs Commission. The Commission - comprising independent experts and leading figures from the fields of criminal justice, public health, politics, community relations and academia, is examining the effectiveness of our drugs laws, with a particular focus on cannabis. The Commission will not consider Class A drugs. During 2022/23, the Commission began work gathering evidence from around the world on the approach taken to cannabis, the best methods of prevention, the most effective criminal justice responses, and the public health benefits of different approaches. Based on its findings, the Commission will make a series of policy recommendations for City Hall, the Government, the police, the criminal justice system and public health services.

We publish a detailed performance report, as well as a comparison with national statistics, every quarter. You can find our quarterly reports for 2022/23 here:

• Quarter 1
• Quarter 2
• Quarter 3
• Quarter 4

MOPAC publishes a wide range of regularly updated data relating to policing, crime and community confidence through our interactive online dashboards.

MOPAC also publishes its academic studies and project evaluations on an ongoing basis. All of our published reports and evaluations are available here.

MOPAC has published our draft Annual Governance Statement – which describes how we do our work and discharge our statutory duties.

MOPAC’s draft Statement of Annual Accounts for 2022/23 is also available here.

Police Appeals Tribunals (PATs) hear appeals against the findings of gross (serious) misconduct brought by police officers or special constables. MOPAC is responsible for appointing the chair and a lay person to conduct the proceedings. You can find details of the Tribunals conducted during 2022/23 and preceding years here.

You can read the latest news from MOPAC on london.gov.uk, and can follow our work on X/Twitter @MOPACLdn.