The first Police and Crime Plan for London had a crowd-pleasing quality, as might have been expected from the mayoralty of Boris Johnson. The document, which the capital’s mayors must produce through their office for policing and crime (MOPAC), set a list of six targets for the period 2013-2016, all of which which featured the figure 20%. It promised a reduction in what it defined as “key neighbourhood crimes” - snappily dubbed the MOPAC 7 - by 20%, reduced re-offending by young people leaving custody by 20%, lessened “delays in the criminal justice system” by 20% and a 20% increase in compliance with community sentences. The same percentage goal was set for “an increase in confidence” in the Met. And all this was to be done while reducing costs by 20% as the capital’s police service took its austerity hit.

What was achieved? Depends on how you look at it. The most recent Police and Crime Plan annual report, covering the year to July 2015, says that the Met had already hit its youth reoffending target, was “on track” with the MOPAC 7 and cutting costs, getting mixed results on court delays, and improving but not fast enough on community sentence compliance and confidence levels. Quite apart from what you make of those results, such target-setting raises questions of itself, such as about the means by which progress is measured and the choice of targets in the first place. Johnson also claimed an 18% fall in all crime since taking office in 2008 and trumpeted getting the number of warranted Met officers up to 32,000, but the significance of these figures too have been challenged.

For example, London Assembly Conservatives have highlighted the non-investigation of many “acquisitve crimes” while the Greens have argued that officers recruited for that nebulous concept “the frontline” have ended up doing so-called “back office” work because the numbers of civilian staff trained to do it had been cut. When Johnson’s plan was being drafted, a trio of high powered criminologists were highly sceptical about the confidence target - both the percentage and, most importantly, the way in which public confidence was to be defined and quantified.

The assumption seemed to be that having more “bobbies on the beat” would push the confidence numbers up and that would be that, when what really mattered was the confidence that comes from good quality interactions with the service and its officers - a confidence that they will be there to help you when you need them and make effective, efficient use use of any help that you provide them with. One of the criminologists said, with some force, that the very setting and pursuit of targets, especially if they appear unrealistic or arbitrary, can have perverse effects: cynicism among officers; the management of crime figures so that the targets can appear to have been met.

We might hope that Sadiq Khan, a former civil rights lawyer with wide experience of spotting where policing and police culture can go wrong, will be alive to all these issues and that his policing deputy Sophie Linden will be too. They aim to publish a new Police and Crime Plan towards the end of the financial year (before April, in other words), and to have a draft of it ready for public consultation before Christmas. Londoners’ views are now being solicited by way of an online survey, which asks for our views about, among other things, neighbourhood policing, cyber crime against businesses, keeping young people safe and tackling violence against women and girls, hate crime and extremism. Some clues, there, perhaps, to the new mayoralty’s priorities for the Met and whoever becomes its next commissioner. You can take the survey here.