Churches told ‘fighting together’ is key to tackling knife crime in capital

Rev Les Isaac, CEO of the Ascension Trust – the governing body of Street Pastors – told Premier at the Pan London Churches Serious Violence Summit in Southwark Cathedral on Tuesday that church unity and action is urgently needed.

“The problems that we are facing as a city is a vast problem and no one organisation or one denomination could adequately respond to it,” he said at the event sponsored by the Bishops of London and Southwark.

He added: “This summit is saying ‘right across the Christian community, let’s come together, let’s look at the issues, and let’s look at how together we can bring a positive and a strong response to it’.”

In the capital there have been 119 homicides this year – including 69 fatal stabbings.

Five of those occurred in a six-day period this month.

In the past 12 months, in the Diocese of Southwark alone, there have been over 4,500 knife crime offences – around 650 of which have caused injury to a person under 25 years-old.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan told the BBC that it could take ten years to “really make significant progress” to solve London’s violent crime problem.

However, Rev Isaac stressed we risk waiting even longer to see significant changes.

He said: “I think there’s been a lack of serious response to this problem. Before we started Street Pastors it used to be guns, drugs and gangs and even then I was saying, ‘listen, it’s a…