Hatton Garden robbery: Police failed to attend jewels heist 'as it was deemed not necessary'

Police were alerted to the Hatton Garden Security jewels heist but failed to attend, it emerged today (10 April). An investigation is now underway over how an intruder call to the Met's central communications unit was passed off as "no police response deemed required".

The error in judgement allowed thieves to continue regardless and access the vault and steal jewels worth up to £200m ($292m) over the Easter Weekend.

A Met Police spokesman said: "At this stage we have established that on Friday, 3 April at 00:21hrs a call was received at the MPS Central Communications Command (MetCC) from Southern Monitoring Alarm Company. The call stated that a confirmed intruder alarm had been activated at the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd.

"The call was recorded and transferred to the police's CAD (computer aided despatch) system. A grade was applied to the call that meant that no police response was deemed to be required. We are now investigating why this grade was applied to the call. This investigation is being carried out locally.

"It is too early to say if the handling of the call would have had an impact on the outcome of the incident," the Met Police spokesman said.

It comes as anger mounts towards the vault's manager Manish Bavishi for failing to return from holiday to address customers concerns.

Gerald Landon, 77, a jeweller who kept valuables in the vault, told the Daily Mail: "I've heard he's in Sudan until the end of the week. I don't know what on Earth he is doing there. It's gross negligence in my view. He should be here, not out there. His customers have no idea what's going on. He should have come back at the first sign of trouble."