Queen Elizabeth II: Mourners warned of 35-hour waits or disappointment
Up to 750,000 will queue to pay their respects as the Queen lies in state in Parliament, causing the biggest operation UK policing has ever dealt with.
More than half of the 750,000 mourners expected to queue to pay their respect to Queen Elizabeth II as she lies in state in Parliament will be disappointed despite waits of up to 35 hours.
The Times has been told that there will only be capacity for about 350,000 people to come into Westminster Hall during the four-day period ahead of the funeral next Monday.
The government will close the five-mile queue early if too many people are joining to avoid people spending hours in the queue only to be disappointed.
A meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency planning committee was told yesterday (Monday) that the central estimate for queuing times was 17-35 hours.
Mourners will face bag checks and searches by sniffer dogs, while firearms officers will be positioned along the route. The government and the Mayor of London are looking at relaxing licensing rules so restaurants and cafes along the route can open 24 hours a day.
Churches will be asked to open their doors to provide welfare and support.
The queue will be divided into zones. Zones will periodically be closed to enable people to get food and refreshments and sit down before returning to the queue using their wristbands.
Ministers also discussed the “delicate” issue of how to stop people spending too long when they get to Westminster Hall for the lying-in-state.
Officials have raised concerns about people “gaming” the system. There will be a “special access” queue running from Tate Britain to the Houses of Parliament intended for people with disabilities and impairments.
The queue is expected to be a few hours long. “We’re worried that people will feign disabilities,” a source involved in planning said. The queues are expected to start at Southwark Park, in Rotherhithe, going along the south side of the Thames before crossing at Lambeth Bridge. People will then go up Millbank to the Houses of Parliament.
The government will encourage people to mark the Queen’s passing locally rather than coming to London.
Security services have advised that the terror threat is “moderate”, but there will be an unprecedented operation. An estimated 10,000 police officers will be on duty every day across the capital. Barriers to stop a vehicle being driven into a crowd are being placed on the roads and uniformed and plain-clothes officers will mingle with crowds. There will be marksmen on rooftops and armed officers on patrol.
Simon Morgan, a former Met personal protection officer for the Queen and other members of the Royal Family, told The Times: “I think it’ll be the biggest policing operation that UK policing has ever dealt with. There’s just so many facets to it.”
Morgan, who runs Trojan Consultancy, a security company, added: “It’s going to be comparable as an event with the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales but I think the crowds will be in excess of that. Especially as the funeral is now a public holiday.” He said that other events secured by the Met, such as Trooping the Colour and the Queen Mother’s funeral, contained elements of the security operation but they had never been combined.
Morgan said: “It really is a massive policing operation and you’ve got the protection issues on top of that ... The Met protection teams will be stretched. It is a big security operation coinciding with a public safety operation.”
Police had planned for years and all possible scenarios had been envisaged
Sir Mark Rowley, the new Metropolitan Police commissioner, said that the lying in state was a “massive challenge” but added that preparations had been ongoing for years and “we will have a safe event”.
THE TIMES
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