London mayor says capital will copy Glasgow to cut knife crime

London mayor Sadiq Khan has launched a violence reduction unit amid attempts to follow Glasgow's lead in reducing knife crime on the streets of the English capital.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who has warned the surge in violent crime in the capital will not be solved "overnight" as he unveiled a plan to focus on the bloodshed as a public health issue. Picture: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

An initial £500,000 has been set aside for the creation of the unit, which aims to follow the pioneering work in Scotland’s largest city treating violence as a public health issue.

Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit, which was launched in 2005, has been credited with helping to reduce the number of homicides in Glasgow by 60 per cent over the past decade.

The mayor’s office said the new unit would help improve coordination between the Metropolitan Police, local authorities, health service and City Hall.

It follows research into how Glasgow’s approach could be “scaled up” to meet the demands of a city with a population close to nine million.

A total of 80 people were stabbed to death in London last year, a quarter of them in their teens. Mr Khan said: “The causes of violent crime are extremely complex, involving deep-seated societal problems like poverty, social alienation, mental ill-health and a lack of opportunity.

He added: “We have listened and researched the public health approaches in cities like Glasgow, where their own long-term approach over more than a decade has delivered large reductions in violence. City Hall have spent time properly learning the lessons from Glasgow and developing plans to scale their approach up to meet the different needs and challenges we face in London.”

Niven Rennie, director of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, said: “The SVRU started by treating violence as a disease which was infecting our communities.

“From teachers and social workers, to doctors and dentists, police and government we have all worked together to make Scotland safer.

“The job isn’t done and every single life lost is a tragedy, but we have come a long way from the days when the World Health Organisation branded Scotland the most violent country in the developed world.”