The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, Sir John Stevens, is keeping a close eye on me. So he whispered in my ear, having followed me to a table in the corner of the room when I went to get a cup of coffee during a recent meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA).

Trouble is – he was only half joking! So what was my crime?

The MPA, which is part of the GLA family and of which I am a member, holds the Metropolitan Police Force to account. As an MPA member, I monitor performance – and as I am Lead Member for response – naturally take a special interest in ‘response’ or indeed lack of it.

So, I had carried out an experiment. I got my ‘team’ at the GLA to telephone all the local police stations in London to see how long they took to answer – if at all.

Now whether or not you can get through to the police when you want to may not be as sexy a subject as gun crime, counter-terrorism or human trafficking – but many more people complain to me about not being able to reach the police than they do about anything else.

They report that they almost never can find police on the beat. Police stations and front counters have often closed and often no one answers when you try to phone your local station. Well – that is the anecdotal evidence people are always giving me when I go to local neighbourhood watch meetings.

So, having telephoned 132 stations – an outrageous 40% didn’t answer. We allowed 100 rings before we hung up. 100 rings take 6 minutes 36 seconds – a very long time. The 40% who didn’t answer at all either cut off at their end, were timed out at a 100 rings by us – or simply clicked onto an answerphone.

The experiment was well documented and thorough – so I put the results of this survey onto the agenda for the MPA meeting. The report was well-received by MPA members and will now feed into a review on managing demand.

But the Deputy Commissioner’s response was to say that MPA members had to make our minds up whether we wanted police on the beat or the ‘phone answered. Call me ambitious – but I think both are not beyond the ability of mankind – or even the Met.

I wrote to every borough commander with the results from their borough, asking them to explain what they thought had led to their poor result or what they had done well when they had a good result.

Before you could say ‘John Stevens’, I was contacted by the Met saying that they didn’t want local commanders to answer my letter – they wanted to give a ‘corporate’ response. I explained that the whole point was not to get a carefully worked out ‘corporate’ response, but rather to get through to the reality of what was – or wasn’t – working locally, on the ground where people come into contact with the police and feed that into the review too. This ‘discussion’ is ongoing as I write …

But whenever I feel Sir John’s eyes boring into my metaphysical back, I think of the local resident of Highgate, who ‘phoned me only this week to say that she had been totally unable to contact the police when she had her purse stolen. The front counter of a nearby police station had closed three years ago. Her local police station (Highgate) had closed completely and no longer even functioned as a police station. There were no police around. She tried ringing – but no one answered. She would have had to take two buses to get to an open police station.

Should it really be so hard to contact the police?