The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) are currently schlepping around London with a new series of public engagement meetings aimed to letting Londoners share their experiences of the new local policing model which started rolling out last year.
Those with long memories will recall that MOPAC’s consultation meetings on the new model were well attended and put to shame the attendance at meetings held by the capital’s fire authority over controversial plans to cut fire engine and fire fighter numbers.
Having defied expectations and set the bar against which all other corners of the Mayor’s empire are measured, MOPAC hopes to tempt equally impressive numbers of Londoners out of their warm homes with the opportunity to harangue Met bosses with their experiences.
But while MOPAC dutifully notes attendance at it meetings, the Met seems to have decided this is one paperwork chore it can safely drop.
Recently published on the force’s website is an FOI response about the number of public meetings it’s held since 2010 – calculated by Scotland Yard to be at least 2,488 – and the number of attendees.
Surprisingly for a force which repeatedly promises to engage with Londoners and take on board their concerns, the Met claims it has no idea how many people attended the meetings.
Like many others. I don’t want to burden the force with unnecessary paperwork but how do you measure your success at engaging local residents if you don’t bother to count how many of them came along?
