Faulty Met CCTV screens ‘putting lives at risk from a terror attack’

A met police control centre used to co-ordinate major operations such as the response to the Westminster terror attack has suffered equipment failures at “critical” times, it emerged today.

Ageing video screens at the Special Operations Room in Lambeth, where live CCTV from across London can be studied, have stopped working at key moments, making senior officers potentially “blind” to events.

Screens failed in the past three years during Remembrance Day, the State Opening of Parliament and the London Marathon, a report reveals. The Met admits that during a “marauding firearms terrorist attack” more failures could lead to loss of life.

The Special Operations Room was used to manage the response to last week’s attack in Westminster that left four innocent victims, including Pc Keith Palmer, dead.

However, it is not believed the screens stopped working during this operation. The room was also called into action during the 2011 riots and 2012 Olympics.

The report, from the Met to the Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime (Mopac), contains an urgent request for screens to be replaced and states: “There is a significant risk that multiple screens will fail during a major event, leaving Gold and Silver [strategic and tactical command] without the information they need to inform decisions in threat-to-life circumstances.

Failure of the screens ... presents significant organisation risk, as the Command Team are effectively blind to the operation. On a number of occasions, screens have failed during critical moments.”

All 158 screens need to be replaced, and 28 are already completely broken and cannot be repaired.

The document, co-authored by Commander Ben-Julian Harrington, points to “major failures” on Remembrance Day in 2014, an unspecified event in October 2015, and last April’s London Marathon.

It adds: “The risk to the ... effective command and control is, in the assessment of Commander Harrington, ‘high’, and in an MTFA [marauding terrorist firearms attack] could lead to loss of life.”

The report warns that engineers have had to cannibalise parts from a back-up centre in Hendon to such an extent the Hendon site is “inoperable”.

It warns “failures will become increasingly common. Our stock of spares has been used up and economic repair is no longer viable”.

The screens were installed in 2006 for £2.4 million. Broken ones go to Holland for repair — described as “expensive and time-consuming”.

The request for £2.27 million from Mopac for new screens was approved by Sophie Linden, deputy mayor for policing and crime, in October.

The Met said work would be carried out this year and in most circumstances screen failures could be managed: “Any risk to an operation was mitigated by an enhanced maintenance regime and stand-by technical support during live operations.”