Wandsworth’s last police counter will stay open. After seven months of uncertainty, a threat of full closure, and a December cliffhanger when the Met wouldn’t say whether its own promise still stood, Superintendent Gani Rajan wrote to residents late Friday to confirm it: Lavender Hill is staying.
The relief comes with a catch. The station has been open around the clock. From Tuesday 3 March, it won’t be. New hours are Monday to Friday 10am to 10pm, and Saturday to Sunday 9am to 7pm. Fourteen hours gone from weekdays, five from weekends.
Rajan doesn’t pretend otherwise. “Since 2012, reports made at front counters have dropped by 60%,” he wrote.
“At some of the quieter locations, we’re seeing fewer than three reports a day. Overnight, only one in every 2,000 crimes is reported at a front counter.”
The Met faces a £260 million funding shortfall. Closing counters saves £7 million a year. These are the numbers behind what is happening across London tonight.
Because while Wandsworth held on, much of London didn’t. Yesterday, Saturday 28 February, the front counters at Twickenham, Harrow, Pinner and Wimbledon closed permanently. Richmond Council launched legal action against the Met in December over the Twickenham closure, arguing residents weren’t consulted and alternatives weren’t explored. That case is still live.
This is the shift the Met is trying to persuade London to accept: that the front counter as an institution belongs to a different era of policing, that officers freed from desk duties are more use on the street, that a yellow phone on an exterior wall and a website address are adequate substitutes. Some residents will agree. Others will remember that Wandsworth lost its last local police stations years ago, that the promises made then about alternative access points didn’t all materialise, and that each reduction in physical presence has been framed as a modernisation rather than a retreat.
Community pressure is why the counter survived at all. Rajan led multiple focus sessions after Lavender Hill was initially earmarked for full closure, a story we first reported in July 2025. “The feedback that you as a community provided was pivotal in us being able to maintain a service,” he wrote on Friday night. The October announcement that the counter would stay came after those sessions. Then December brought fresh doubt: the Met’s estate strategy made no mention of the station. Tonight’s email is the resolution.
It’s a partial win in a long decline. The station stays open. The hours shrink. Across London, the pattern continues.
If the counter is closed when you need it
Outside the new hours, a yellow phone outside the station connects to police services. Non-emergencies can be reported by calling 101, online at met.police.uk, or by texting 18000 for those with hearing or speech impairments. In an emergency, call 999. To report anonymously, contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or at crimestoppers-uk.org.
The nearest 24-hour counters are Charing Cross Police Station (2 Agar Street, WC2N 4JP) and Lewisham Police Station (43 Lewisham High Street, SE13 5JZ).
