Frontrunners in the race for London Mayor have promised to increase the number of police officers on the streets after cuts during Boris Johnson’s reign.

Labour candidate Ken Livingstone claimed Kingston has lost 36 frontline officers since March 2010.

Ten of the 16 wards have been sharing sergeants as numbers have dropped while there has been a freeze in recruitment.

Two years ago when numbers were at a peak, Kingston had the equivalent of 329 police officers, including the 64 in the safer neighbourhood teams and 90 police community support officers.

As of January 2012 there were just 298 PCs and 69 PCSOs, according to Metropolitan Police Authority statistics.

Tory candidate Boris Johnson has promised to bring an extra 48 police officers to Kingston’s streets if he is re-elected as London Mayor.

He said: “I have protected these teams while there have been cuts in other parts of the country. But now I want to go further to help the teams do even more to combat crime.”

But Ken Livingstone said: “Boris Johnson has admitted cutting 1,700 police officers across London. I will reverse his cuts. And I will reinstate sergeants to all 600 Safer Neighbourhood Teams, more of which will be beefed up to a minimum of nine officers.”

Peter Smyth, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said: “Boris has managed to secure extra funding from government and the Met Police are now recruiting.

“But I understand he plans to increase the number of officers in safer neighbourhood teams but at the expense of response teams. That is robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

He said both Ken and Boris were trying to claim credit for the period in 2008 when numbers were highest.

Former Met Commander Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat candidate, has also pledged to increase numbers, up to 33,500 including restoring the number of sergeants.

Independent candidate Siobhan Benita said she was calling for an independent capability review of police numbers to see what was needed. She said: “I just don’t think anyone can do a sensible answer to this before we have done a study of how police officer numbers are used.”

New Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe admitted numbers had dropped when he announced the end to the capital’s recruitment freeze during a public meeting in Kingston in February.

But he said numbers would take time to restore.