Digital radios used by the Metropolitan Police are not working properly inside buildings and blackspots because contractors have not put up enough phone masts to cope.

Frustrated Kingston officers are getting on with the job, but having to resort to using their mobile phones or car radios as back up.

Since some of the phone masts were built across the capital six or seven years ago, new buildings have been placed next to them, disrupting their signal.

The Met Police Authority is already seriously concerned about the capacity of Airwave across London and believes it will be severely tested during the Olympics.

Kingston police said the issues were not affecting frontline policing and hoped to fix them by the end of September, but at an extra cost, because it is outside of the original contract specification agreed years ago.

Metropolitan Police Federation chairman Peter Smyth said there had been lots of problems since their introduction in London a couple of years ago.

He said: “I would guess the problem in Kingston is probably buildings or a couple of blackspots where they didn’t work very well.

“The Met have been getting around the problems and I think it is today they are taking their first delivery of new vehicles which have a special booster in them for signals.”

He said on some occasions, control units taking emergency calls had been unaware officers were ready to be deployed as they were in the police station and not picked up by Airwave.

Kingston chief inspector Alison Dollery said: “The challenges are for the borough in terms of ensuring good coverage using the technology to its best advantage.

“Airwaves is an ongoing project which is continually being improved and updated. Keeping officers informed of the changes and up-to-date is the challenge for the borough.”

A spokesman for Airwave said: “There have been some issues with in-building coverage which we have been working to improve.”

She confirmed the police would have to pay more as the issue had not been in the original contract specification.

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