Wandsworth’s police cells have been closed for most of the past 16 months over safety fears, with anyone arrested in the borough taken to Sutton instead.
No announcement about the closure has been found on the Metropolitan Police’s website, in its press releases, or any other public record.
The fact emerged this weekend, in four sentences buried in a supplementary document published two days before a closed community safety meeting.
A custody report is an agenda item for every quarterly meeting of the Wandsworth Safer Neighbourhood Board, the body established by the Mayor of London to hold the Met locally accountable. For next week’s meeting, Martha Vaughan, who leads Wandsworth’s volunteer custody monitoring scheme, notes: “Wandsworth custody suite is currently closed so we are completing visits at Sutton.”
The issue goes far deeper than the brief note suggests. In February and March 2025, inspectors from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary found ligature points (anchor points that could be used for hanging or strangulation) in the toilet design at Wandsworth. Of 22 Met custody suites inspected, only Wandsworth and Peckham were found at fault. Wandsworth was closed immediately. The full inspection report was published five months later in August 2025.
No announcement was made to the public, and no update was provided to the board at its next meeting in March 2025.
Three months later, in June 2025, the board received a short note to say the cells had briefly reopened and then closed again for further repairs. The board received no custody update at its October 2025 meeting.
That same month, BBC Panorama broadcast “Undercover in the Police.” An undercover journalist posing as a detention officer at Charing Cross police station filmed officers boasting about violence, making racist and sexist remarks, and mocking victims of rape and abuse. Seven officers were ultimately dismissed. The programme triggered sweeping reforms to how the Met runs its cells across London. It did not prompt a single public word about Wandsworth.
A year and a half of silence
At the December 2025 board meeting, the SNB did receive a custody report, but it was focused entirely on the Met-wide fallout from Panorama.
“There is lots happening across custody suites in London due to the recent Panorama on Charing Cross, and there are wide changes to the Met which will impact all custody suites including Wandsworth,” it notes.
“Wandsworth ICVs (Independent Custody Visitors), like others across London are concerned with some of the proposed changes, which include all custody sergeants with 2+ years of experience being moved out of Met detention, presumably to be replaced with those without prior custody experience. ICVs have flagged our concern around this to MOPAC as we anticipate that this will negatively impact the experience of detainees in custody.”
No custody update was given at the March 2026 board meeting either.
In 16 months, in which it appears Wandsworth’s cells have been open only periodically, the Met provided one brief update to the board it is supposed to serve and nothing at all to the public. Then came this weekend’s supplementary document: four sentences confirming the cells are currently closed and visits are happening in Sutton.
A further structural change, described as a Community Scrutiny Transformation Programme, is expected to affect how the volunteer oversight scheme works in future. The board has not yet been told the details.
Wandsworth has already seen its police presence reduced significantly. Front counters at Putney, Battersea, and Tooting have closed in recent years; Lavender Hill, the last remaining counter in the borough, moved to reduced hours in March 2026 after months of uncertainty about whether it would stay open at all.
The station at 146 Wandsworth High Street is still listed as a working custody facility by at least one criminal law firm advertising representation there. No press release about the cells closing has been found in any public record.
What this means for people in Wandsworth
The Independent Custody Visiting scheme was created in the wake of the Brixton riots. Lord Scarman’s 1981 inquiry recommended that local communities should be able to make random checks on how the police treat people they hold in their cells. In 2003 it became a legal requirement.
Wandsworth’s volunteer visitors are currently making those visits in Sutton, because that is where people arrested in Wandsworth are being taken. They check that detainees have been offered food and water, that cells are in a reasonable condition, and that people have been told their legal rights. Their visits are unannounced. That is the point.
The Wandsworth Safer Neighbourhood Board exists to ensure that this kind of scrutiny is working and that local policing is accountable to the community it serves. For 16 months, the board was not told what was happening to the cells it was supposed to be monitoring. Neither was anyone else.
Anyone with information about the closure or its impact can contact Putney.news at news@putney.news.
