An Eltham resident is questioning the Mayor of London’s ability to manage the police after he was charged for his stolen motor home crossing a ULEZ boundary.
The Progress Estate resident’s motor home was stolen from outside his home at the end of March and as it was driven away it crossed an old ULEZ boundary at the end of Downman Road leading to the resident being charged by Transport for London while the theft was happening. The charge was issued using Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology but the resident was informed that despite this being used to issue fines and track speeding on roads, the police had no access to the images through the Transport for London systems. So although the technology and hardware exists to track the stolen motor home, this could not be used by the police. Despite the fact that his local police team in Eltham Park and Progress lists preventing motor crime as one of its priorities the resident was left with the strong impression that the police had already closed his case (as they referred to ‘reopening’ it after his call).
The Eltham resident said “The only person I spoke to face to face was from Victim Support when they called round to see if I was okay. Frankly I’d rather have spoken directly with the police to see if they could track down my motor home. I can’t see how two organisations controlled by Sadiq Khan can’t co-ordinate their work to help catch thieves as it all feels a bit like no one was taking my case seriously.”
The failure to catch the criminals is not a surprise given an analysis by the Telegraph last year which suggested that the police failed to solve a single theft across a third of neighbourhoods over the previous three years. According to the Telegraph article, in Eltham the number of burglaries solved varied between 0.9 and 2% meaning that thieves can reasonably expect to escape detection in cases like Mr Sheridan’s.
Unfortunately the situation is unlikely to get better under the current Mayor of London as the BBC reported in April 2025 that the number of Police Officers, PCSOs and staff were going to be cut by 1,700 something we have already seen locally with the withdrawal of police from Greenwich Park after 150 years.
Locally, the failure of management Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) has been made clear with the proposal to close the Coldharbour Estate Police base while seeking to open another not far away on the Bromley side of the border. Conservative Councillors led by Leader of the Opposition Cllr Matt Hartley have argued that this makes no sense and seem to have been making some headway with this argument at a London level despite a lack of support from Greenwich’s Labour Councillors who are backing the closure of the Coldharbour Police base. The lack of proper resource allocation has also been seen in Kidbrooke where the Council allocated £0.78m from Berkley Homes to open a new police base a year ago but no progress appears to have been made.
Eltham Page Ward Safer Neighbourhood Panel Chair Phil Russell commented “The police locally work really hard to do the best for residents but with funding cuts, police station closures and political leadership who do not seem to understand what is important it is hard for them to catch criminals in the way local residents would like. There have been 44 cases of shoplifting in the Co-op not far from where Mr Sheridan live so I fear this lawlessness is not limited to stealing cars and vans.”
It is worth noting that the Labour Party’s manifesto at the 2024 General Election made some very specific (and in my opinion correct) commitments including “When you call the police, they should come. When you report a crime, it should be properly investigated no matter who you are, or where you live.” It is hard not to think that Eltham residents are suffering from the withdrawal of police from our area when the police station closed but also from a failure by the Labour Government, Mayor and Council to properly support the police so that they can do their job properly.