The town hall will begin paying towards the salaries of eleven of the Met’s coroner officers from 2028, reports Sebastian Mann, Local Democracy Reporter
Certain Metropolitan Police officers will be funded by Waltham Forest Council in the future due to budget cuts.
The force is no longer able to fund coroner officers across London as it grapples with a £159million black hole in its finances.
Coroners’ officers are administrative and investigative staff who work under a coroner. They deal with unexpected, violent, or unnatural deaths, act as the main point of contact for grieving families, and function as a go-between for the police, doctors, and mortuaries.
Starting from 2028/29 Waltham Forest will be required to start contributing towards the annual £675,388 cost of the Coroners Service.
There are eleven officers operating across Barking & Dagenham, Havering, Newham, Redbridge, and Waltham Forest.
The council says it negotiated with the Met for 18 months before reaching an agreement.
“We have negotiated a tapering agreement with the Metropolitan Police that has secured funding beyond the level initially offered,” a spokesperson for Waltham Forest Council said.
“This means that [the Met] will fund half the costs of the coroner service in 2028/29, and a quarter in 2029/30, before the five boroughs share the full costs of the service from 2030/31 onwards.”
From 2030/31, Waltham Forest will pay around 19.6% of the overall costs for the service, with this calculation being based on the 2021 census data.
A spokesperson for the Met said its priority was “keeping London safe” after making more than £1billion worth of cuts over the past decades.
They said: “We have worked hard to protect the areas that matter most to Londoners, including neighbourhood policing, violence against women and girls, public protection and the work to improve culture and standards.
“However, having already exhausted many options away from the frontline, the scale of the challenge means we are now having to consider choices that will affect the way policing is delivered.
“We have an ambitious programme to bring forward new technology to minimise the impact of these changes as much as possible, but even so we will not be able to keep doing all that we currently do and so we will need to refocus much more on core policing roles and responsibilities.
“Despite this, our priority remains keeping London safe. We will continue to focus our resources on the issues that pose the greatest threat, harm and risk, and on tackling the most dangerous offenders.
“We will be clear with the public about the decisions we are having to make and the impact they may have, while continuing to work with officers, staff and partners to ensure we deliver the best possible service with the resources available to us.”
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