As much as the British press has tried to evade and dissemble about Prince Harry’s UK security situation, the fact remains that Harry requested a risk assessment from the Home Office last autumn, and he was told last December that the assessment was on track to be completed this year. Then the risk assessment was paused months ago and no one informed Harry until just days before he was due to visit the UK. The informed him of the paused risk assessment at the same time Ravec refused police protection to Harry, his wife and children for their visit, despite the fact that he once again gave them 28 days notice and he was there on Invictus business. Not only that, he provided his own private security’s risk assessment to Ravec and the British security services, an assessment which detailed the unique threats he’s under in the UK.

Well, weeks after all of those shenanigans and humiliation rituals, the Times of London is circling back to the questions about security and why Harry’s risk assessment wasn’t completed. I can’t access this piece, so I’m using secondary sources:

Prince Harry will now be forced to wait a while longer as his request for a review of his police protection in the UK has reportedly been delayed. The Duke of Sussex, who travelled to Britain for one week earlier this month, recently requested a review of his right to police protection in the UK – but it was denied just hours before he was set to travel with his young family at the start of July.

The 41-year-old then made the journey on his own, before his wife and two children joined him later in the week. It has now emerged that he is being forced to await a decision whilst officials grapple with how to protect an unprecedented nine former prime ministers at once. Harry was previously told that he would be granted a risk management board at the end of last year to reassess his right to protection when he visits the UK.

The review was due to be carried out in March by the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (Ravec), an independent body overseen by the Home Office, but it had still not taken place by the end of June. It is understood that to cope with demand, officials were ordered to place a temporary pause on Harry’s review, The Times reports.

A source familiar with the process said: “Harry’s case is not all about Harry. It’s about a much wider situation within the police about the number of former premiers they are now protecting and fewer armed officers available.”

However a different source with knowledge of the process told The Royalist that the Home Office’s argument, that Harry’s assessment had been paused because officials were too busy, was “bizarre.”

The source said that more resources should be thrown at the issue of at-risk individuals’ security, and suggested that highly trained close protection officers are being routinely pulled onto other duties to plug gaps in the U.K.’s massively overstressed police force. Close protection needed to be prioritized, the source said, criticizing the Home Office for failing to put those with public roles first.

The Times reports that all of this is happening while the pool of armed officers shrinks. Government figures cited by the paper show 6,621 operationally deployable armed officers in England and Wales in 2019, falling to a low of 5,753 in 2025 before a modest recovery to 5,917 in 2026. That is still only slightly above the 5,639 recorded in 2016, when a national program was launched specifically to increase firearms officer numbers.

The biggest issue, as the Times makes clear, is a totally unprecedented strain on protection resources, made horrendously visible by the alleged murder this month of the former minister Ann Widdecombe, and the volume of threats against Nigel Farage and other divisive figures in an ever more polarized political climate. A source with knowledge of the delay told the Times there were “strains on capacity” in the team tasked with protecting public figures.

The i Paper reported last month that protecting the eight former prime ministers who preceded Starmer required around 135 officers at a cost of £13 million.

A Home Office spokesperson told The Times: “The UK government’s protective security system is rigorous and proportionate. It is our long-standing policy not to provide detailed information on those arrangements, as doing so could compromise their integrity and affect individuals’ security.”

[From The Daily Express & The Royalist Substack]

A few things – there’s been no risk assessment on Harry and his family since 2019, so this in essence a seven-year delay, during which there have been five prime ministers. Surely, the risk assessment should have happened under Boris Johnson’s tenure, you know? Instead, they’re now blaming the Downing Street chaos as an excuse for why a British veteran and prince can’t have police protection. It seems like the Met Police would rather people believe that they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, as opposed to the reality, which is that levers are being pulled to ensure that the Sussexes never get any kind of police protection. It also makes zero sense that the Home Office would confirm that the assessment will be done, and that they requested Harry submit his own private assessment, and then, magically, the assessment stops mid-stream in March. And using the murder of Ann Widdecombe as an excuse for why Harry’s assessment will remain delayed is utterly bizarre – surely, the murder of a prominent politician is proof that Harry’s security concerns are utterly valid.

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