Its easy to be superficially grateful for the hard work carried out by our emergency services when we go to sleep or wake up, particularly if we can hear sirens off into the distance. No matter how irritating the noise might be, the fact is that if we need help, we can be assured that there are Police Officers or other specialists hard at work and ready to help us. What is harder to appreciate are the real story behind this ready to serve feature of our modern lives. Although there are Police Officers on duty 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the shift patterns quite naturally reflect the peaks of anticipated activity. The challenge of getting home after a shift in areas where parking is a challenge and public transport has stopped running can be a real challenge. The most acute issues are in London where many officers cannot always expect to live in the same Borough as their work shifts, and indeed they may need to live outside of the Capital due to the very excessive costs of housing in the Capital.

This report explains that the peak time when officers are needed in London boroughs is between around 7pm and 1am, but after this time crime tails off, meaning keeping officers on overnight would be inefficient for the Metropolitan Police who like other services are under acute financial pressure. This leads to Officers finishing their shifts and heading home at 2am or 3am. However whilst London is very well served for public transport throughout the day, this provision is extremely scarce or non existent in the early hours of each morning. Unbelievably this leads some officers to resorting to sleep on the streets because they have no means of getting home, nor can they afford temporary accommodation.  According to the Police Federation officers have been bedding down on benches, under bridges and in train stations after finishing shifts in the early hours of the morning after trains had stopped running. “Officers are not allowed to sleep in police stations, so they are going to train stations and sleeping there or on benches near the station so that as soon as the first train leaves they can go home.” “An officer might end up finishing at 1am and missing the late train, meaning they cannot get home because night buses only go within London. There used to be police section houses with accommodation for officers all over London, but now there is just one.” The lack of parking in some cases reflects the decision by the Metropolitan Police to sell off parking spaces and due to the cost of public parking.

The three London Boroughs where this problem is most acute are Westminster, Camden and Kensington and Chelsea. In at least one of these Boroughs the Police like other shift workers are not alone in their need to find places to sleep after their shift is ended, before the trains and buses begin running again. In the Palace of Westminster 650 MPs and potentially 900 Lords and Ladies are often sitting late into the evening. They do have the power to change their own working hours, unlike the Police Officers. However over many years have resisted the calls to do so. Many of them also have a safety net which is often in the headlines. We the state are happy to pay for them to have Hotel Accommodation at our expense or indeed we will even pay for them to have a second home so that they can choose where to stay when they have been working for us, if they have very long journeys to make. Clearly we cannot purchase second homes for Police Officers, and to do so would simply add to the need for more housing in London. However perhaps we need more section houses, that could accommodate MPs as well as Police Officers and then we could kill two birds with one stone? The money saved from the Hotel costs and Second Home costs could be used to fund the section houses!