The Metropolitan police is to increase the number of its armed officers by 600, with a third on standby to respond to a mass terrorist attack.

The Met’s commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said the initiative was a direct response to the Paris attacks, in which 130 people were killed by gunmen and suicide bombs across the French capital.

Though the increase has been welcomed by the Police Federation and the mayor of London, some experts have criticised the delay in deciding how extra Home Office funding for counter-terrorism training for regional police forces would be spent.

Forces outside London have yet to say how many extra firearms officers, if any, they intend to deploy and Labour said it was imperative Britain’s other cities were not left behind.

The home secretary, Theresa May, announced just before Christmas that she was making £34m available to police forces to “enable a major uplift in firearms capability and capacity so that we can respond quickly and forcefully to a firearms attack”.

She has told chief constables that she wanted to see the number of armed rapid response vehicles increased by up to 50% and that new funding will be available to increase the number of specialist counter-terrorism firearms officers.

The Met’s extra 600 firearms officers will cost £25m of the extra £34m that the Home Office has made available.

Chris Phillips, a former head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office, said he was concerned that funding for extra firearms training was being concentrated in the capital. “The number has always been higher in London but it does concern me a little bit that we are always focusing on London. We know that the terrorist threat is actually worldwide and UK-wide,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“I think the Home Office needs to have a rethink about how they are divvying up the money … because this threat is not just about London. It’s the terrorist that decides. We’ve seen attackers in other parts of the country, they could just as easily decide to attack Bristol or Portsmouth.”

The shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, called for more transparency and asked whether other big cities would be offered money to train more officers. “Today’s announcement sounds like good news in the wake of the Paris attacks but we do have to ask where the money is coming from,” he said.

“If it’s taken out of neighbourhood policing so we see police officers come off the beat, or if it’s money that isn’t then available to other big cities around the country, then that wouldn’t be right.”

At present there are about 2,200 Met firearms officers. Under the new scheme the number of armed patrols will more than double and a further 600 officers will receive firearms training.

Announcing the funding for London’s police force, Hogan-Howe said: “The tragic attacks in Paris reinforced the vital role that firearms officers would be called upon to play on behalf of all of us, to run forward and confront the deadly threat that such attackers would pose.

“Whilst I sincerely hope it is something that never happens on our streets, it is only right that the Met are as ready as can be.”



Met police's decision to arm a further 600 officers is no gamechanger Read more

Last year, Home Office figures showed a 15% drop in armed officers across the UK since 2008, from nearly 7,000 to 5,875. Drops were steep in the regions, probably linked to there being less gun crime, with the number of firearms officers in Greater Manchester down 27%, in Merseyside down 25%, and in the West Midlands down 12%. Warwickshire saw a 47% drop. Those numbers encompass firearms officers as a whole, not the specialist counter-terrorism police trained to deal with terrorist attacks and sieges.



Simon Chesterman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council said on Thursday: “Individual chief constables and commissioners will take decisions about the number of armed officers required in their force. Nationally we are working with all police forces and the armed services to build our capacity at a national level to respond to a well organised, multi-sited terrorist attack in the UK.”

The deputy chair of the West Midlands Police Federation, Tom Cuddeford, whose force is the second largest after the Met, said the funding should be proportionate to the threat level faced.

“The new chief constable, Dave Thompson, has made it clear he does want training for more firearms officers here and I’m pretty confident we will get it: at the moment we don’t feel left behind,” he said.

Despite the increase, fewer than 10% of the Met’s 32,000 officers will be authorised to carry a gun. Hogan-Howe said he had no intention of changing the fundamental principle that police in Britain do not routinely carry guns, with 92% of officers remaining unarmed.

“My firearms officers are our heroes – we expect them to run towards a terrorist attack and take action to confront and stop that threat,” he said. “By increasing the number of armed response vehicle officers we can make sure that our firearms response continues to come from a group of highly specialist and highly skilled officers.”

Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan police federation, told the Guardian he backed the commissioner’s decision. “He has recognised [that] what’s gone on in Europe means we have to have a greater firearms capability,” he said.

The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, also welcomed the increase, calling it “absolutely essential” to meet what he called “the right level of police protection”.

It had been claimed in recent weeks that many Met firearms officers were feeling disaffected by a homicide investigation into the shooting of Jermaine Baker, 28, in Wood Green, north London, during a police operation to stop a possible attempt to free two prisoners travelling to a London court.

Marsh said that despite the turmoil, he believed the force would still get 450 new officers volunteering to carry weapons. Recruitment to increase the numbers is starting internally within the Met.

On Wednesday, Hogan-Howe revealed he was meeting armed officers every two weeks in an effort to keep up morale, and he has raised concerns that marksmen should have greater legal protection. David Cameron has said the government is considering legal changes to make it more difficult to prosecute firearms officers who shoot terrorists.

Marsh told the BBC: “We need to look very carefully at what is out there in terms of the legality. Our colleagues need to know when they are making that split-second decision, when they have honestly held belief in what they are doing, they are going to be backed up and taken care of.”

He dismissed the idea that entry requirements for training firearms officers would be diluted to make up the numbers, when three out of four applicants for training are currently rejected.

“My colleagues are highly trained to do the job they do, they don’t all get accepted and it is the most rigorous training to be a firearms officer,” Marsh said. “I think they will still stick to the entry requirements, they will still take a very high standard and it won’t be watered down just suddenly because we need a lot more officers.”