Victims of crime in London could be denied a personal visit from police unless they are judged to be sufficiently “vulnerable”, one of Scotland Yard’s most senior officers has warned.

Deputy commissioner Craig Mackey said the “absolutely feasible” change would see the Met assessing the level of risk faced by a caller when deciding whether to send officers for a “face to face service”.

He said members of the public who might be prioritised in future included people with learning difficulties, the elderly and people who did not speak English as their first language.

Healthy middle-aged men such as himself might miss out. Mr Mackey said burglary victims would “probably always get a service” but that “vehicle crime, those sorts of things” were among the types of offence where police might not attend unless the person affected was vulnerable.

He admitted this was a “difficult area” of policy, but said it could be required to help the force cope with major spending cuts over the coming years.

Speaking to the Standard, Mr Mackey also set out how the Met is striving to prevent officers numbers falling below the landmark 30,000 figure in the face of a projected £400 million drop in funding over the next five years.

Looking ahead to how the force will cope with less money and fewer officers, he said: “That’s where you get into some of the difficult areas around do you always offer the same service to everyone? Increasingly, as we go forward we will look at things like trying to assess people and crime on the sort of the threat, the harm, the risk, and people’s vulnerability.

“It’s absolutely feasible as we go forward that if my neighbour is a vulnerable elderly person who has experienced a particular type of crime, that she gets a face-to-face service that I don’t get. So we triage things... we assess people’s vulnerability.

“Vulnerability can manifest itself in a number of ways: people with learning difficulties, a whole range of things, some people for whom English isn’t a first language. That’s about how we get those resources focused on the things you can make a difference with. But also as we go forward, as demand grows, you have to have a way of controlling and triaging.”

The deputy commissioner said that it was inevitable that the force would become “smaller”, despite rising crime, a growing population and the heightened terror threat.

The scale of the reduction will depend partly on future funding decisions and inflation, which was currently above the assumption in the Met’s budget, and the exchange rate, which affects technology purchases. Mr Mackey said a sweeping overhaul of its operations would help to minimise the impact on the public.

This includes a property sell-off which will involve the closure of police stations, safer neighbourhood bases, offices and other sites. The use of technology will also be expanded to enable officers to file crime reports on patrol.

Mr Mackey said: “The Met will get smaller over the next four or five years. We are at 30,700 officers now. Realistically, we will be about 30,000 through most of next year. It’s almost impossible to predict beyond that.

“It’s about how you maximise what you’ve got. With buildings, you take running costs out and that equates to keeping more officers. Nothing in this changes when people ring us and say, ‘Please, please come’. That 999 service is absolutely not changing.

“The reality is that the core part of the service that there’s an emergency, please come quick, is what we all joined policing to do, to protect and to make sure it’s the best we can possibly do.”

In one scheme in west London, Hammersmith police station will get a £60 million upgrade while five other stations, including Notting Hill and Fulham, close. The plan, which will also pay for the refurbishment of Kensington police station, will save £1.25 million a year in running costs, equivalent to the cost of 27 officers, and provide £55 million in one-off capital receipts.

Similar schemes, which will lead to the closure of more than 250 Met buildings, will generate enough savings to pay for the employment of 1,100 officers a year and help fund the modernisation of remaining buildings. Mr Mackey said each borough would retain at least one police station open 24 hours a day. He said many of the buildings that will be shut currently had no public access — and that many of those which did had a low number of people attending.