Territorial Operations


Territorial Operations was a group of eighteen specialist Metropolitan Police units which were set up in 1986 as part of Sir Kenneth Newman's restructuring of the Metropolitan Police Service. The Territorial Operations units were designed to support the Metropolitan Police areas—while area-based policing was designed to decentralise the operations of New Scotland Yard, the TO units were intended to provide central operational and logistic support to Areas and divisional OCUs.

TO designations

Due to restructuring of the Metropolitan Police, Territorial Operations as a group has been disbanded. The current term 'Territorial Policing' refers to the co-operation of divisional OCUs with pan-London units, many of them formerly TO units. The remaining pan-London units are now the remit of Central Operations. Where units have been renamed or reassigned, these are listed in italics.