Met Police faced deluge of calls during snowfall

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Scotland Yard was deluged with 2,760 calls over three hours as Londoners woke up to a blanket of snow on Monday morning.

Acting Assistant Commissioner Rose Fitzpatrick said the number of calls was higher than New Year's Eve, the force's busiest night of the year.

She said night shift call handlers continued working into the day to help deal with the flurry of emergency calls.

Speaking at a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), she said there was initially a lull in calls before the impact of the snow became clear.

She said: "The impact on policing was initially we saw a reduction in calls but then we saw a very high demand level overall and over a three-hour period on Monday we were experiencing calls which were higher than we got on New Year's Eve.

"We were getting 230 calls every 15 minutes during that three-hour period. That placed a great strain on the Met's core facilities and on boroughs."

Under questioning by MPA members, Ms Fitzpatrick said the force played no part in the controversial decision to suspend the capital's buses.

But she said the Met was left to house dozens of offenders and criminal suspects who could not be taken to prison after institutions shut their doors.

She said: "There was an impact on our custody provision, not least because most courts were closed and all the London prisons were closed and prisoner transfers were severely disrupted.

"During the day we took 73 prisoners to court and 51 were remanded in custody but were put back in police cells because there were no facilities for them."