The Met Police will not meet its recruitment quota under the Uplift programme, its Commissioner has told the London Assembly.

Speaking yesterday to the London Assembly's Budget and Performance Committee, Sir Mark Rowley said: "For us to meet our police uplift number, we won't meet exactly the number by April.

"It will take us a few months into next year to do that, and we’re in correspondence with the Home Office about that.”

Sir Mark spoke frankly about the recruitment challenges facing the force.

He said: "We're hoping to get to somewhere around 35,000 by the end of the year, it is an increasingly challenging market. 

"Recruiting the best part of 10,000 officers in the last three years - with a combination of replacing retirements etc and growing the numbers - you do start to get to a stage where you've sort of almost exhausted the market."

He told the Assembly “we’re taking everybody who can meet the standard”.

The programme, which will see the Home Office fund the recruitment of 20,000 officers across the 43 forces, is due to conclude at the end of March 2023.

According to the latest figures, the Met had recruited 3,109 of the 4,557 officers designated under its allocation by September. The next update will be published on January 25, 2023, covering the period to December.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "Our absolute priority is cutting crime and making our streets safer and we are providing police forces the resources they need to do this.

"The Police Uplift Programme remains on track to deliver on the people’s priorities by recruiting an additional 20,000 police officers, by March 2023.”

The Commissioner also spoke about the Met's proposed budget for 2023/2024, specifically addressing one area still to be finalised: "We haven't yet finally costed what I think we need to put into the budget in terms of reform costs.

"And I think that's probably a further few tens of millions."

Elaborating on this, he cited neighbourhood policing and the need for the Met to be more data and technology driven as the "sort of things that are of concern to me". 

Acknowledging that costing this area partially "sits with" him, the Commissioner stressed that "some of the issue in terms of reform in the Met will be helped by the right finances".

Sir Mark said that this aspect of the budget will be finalised "over the next week or two".