The Metropolitan Police Authority website has seemingly been taken offline despite Mayor Boris Johnson saying it would remain in place “for several years” to ensure transparency.
The MPA was the capital’s police scrutiny body between 2000 and 2012 when it was replaced by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.
The MOPC sets the budget and strategic priorities for the Metropolitan Police and is scrutinised by the London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee.
The MPA website contained all historic papers relating to the defunct Authority, few of which have been migrated to the new MOPC website.
In May Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon asked the Mayor to confirm the site would “remain available to the public indefinitely”. In response Johnson said there were “currently no plans” for its removal.
The Mayor added: “The expectation is that it will need to remain in place for several years to meet FOI Act requirements.”
Despite the Mayor’s comments the mpa.gov.uk site is no longer available. It was last accessible by Google on June 30th 2012 at 00:45:16 GMT according to the search engine’s cache.
A non-searchable version of the MPA site is available at policeauthority.org/Metropolitan however the mpa.gov.uk domain, which is listed by search engines, does not redirect to it. Instead visitors to mpa.gov.uk receive an error message advising the required site cannot be found.
Just weeks before this year’s elections the entire Transport for London archive of press releases and statements vanished from the web.
TfL later restored access and blamed “a technical error”.
Update 13.25 A City Hall spokesperson said a link to policeauthority.org/Metropolitan has “now” been placed on the Greater London Authority website.
