Met chief calls for extra checks on hire vehicles to thwart attacks

THE Metropolitan Police Commissioner has indicated that the hire of vans may have to be regulated to prevent them being used in a terrorist attack.

Cressida Dick said new laws may be required to control the ability of people to hire vans at short notice. This could help to weed out potential attackers, such as the man alleged to have mown down Muslim worshippers in Finsbury Park and the London Bridge terror gang.

She told the London Assembly yesterday that police were currently reliant on information from van hire firms to monitor who was trying get a hire vehicle for sinister purposes.

Ms Dick said: “How can you, it’s very hard, but how can you deal with van hire? We’ve sent a message to the hire community, please be careful, think who it is, if there’s anything suspicious let us know.” She added, however, that more may need to be done to make the job of gathering intelligence on the hire of vehicles easier for the police.

“Should that be regulated in any way? There’s a whole big review to be done. It might require some legislation,” she told the assembly’s Police and Crime Committee.

Ms Dick voiced her concerns over the easy availability of vans to be used as potential weapons two days after a hire van was rammed into a group of men and women leaving Finsbury Park Mosque, leaving one man dead and 11 other people injured. Darren Osborne, 47, was dragged from the vehicle by the crowd and is under arrest on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism, including murder and attempted murder.

Mr Osborne, from Cardiff, is suspected of hiring the van from the Pontyclun Van Hire firm in south Wales before driving to north London.

There have been calls for a time delay to be introduced before individuals can drive off with a hired van or lorry, to allow for more background checks to be carried out. A hire van was also used by the London Bridge terrorists when they mowed down pedestrians on the bridge before attacking people in cafés and bars around Borough Market, killing eight and injuring 48 others. The Westminster Bridge attacker, Khalid Masood, drove a hired SUV vehicle into pedestrians during another attack in March.

Ms Dick told the committee a number of criminal investigations have had to be paused or put on the back burner in order to free resources to deal with the recent spate of critical situations.

The Grenfell Tower disaster alone has seen 260 detectives seconded to the investigation into the cause and culpability for the blaze.

♦ Police used Tasers to bring down a man feared to be about to attack people at Regent’s Park mosque in London yesterday. Officers were called at around 1.20am and found the man waving an item which turned out to be a shoe horn. Scotland Yard said the incident was not being treated as terror-related.

‘We’ve sent a message to the hire community, please be careful, think who it is, if suspicious let us know’