The Metropolitan Police is adding 122 officers to the streets of London to fight violent crime for the next three months, but won't get any formal training before moving across.

The team will focus on making arrests and taking weapons off the streets in the areas of London with the highest concentrations of knife and other forms of violent crime.

The new officers will temporarily be moved from the Met’s Roads and Transport Policing Command to the Violent Crime Taskforce, and will be ready to start their new roles from Monday September 17.

According to the Met Police, the officers moving across from the Roads and Transporting Police Command are not set to receive any formal training before the transfer.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “The officers from roads and traffic moving to the task force will support the unit in their current capacity so there is no training required.”

John Cryer, MP for Leyton and Wanstead, has praised the move.

He said: “Violent crime has been on the rise since 2014 and in recent weeks we have seen too many lives lost on the streets of London to guns and knives.

“This is neither acceptable nor inevitable. We must all do more must be done to tackle both crime, and the root causes of crime.

“We need a police force with the resources to provide reassurance to communities, do the necessary prevention work and catch those who commit crimes.”

The Metropolitan Police has launched 80 murder investigations in London since the start of this year.

The move will give officers a greater presence in areas with high levels of violent crime, as well as allowing more intelligence-led and targeted stop and search, and the use of specialists in covert tactics.

The team will target dangerous offenders and provide local officers with intelligence to help to take them off the streets.

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “This is drastic action that I would rather we didn’t have to take, but the Government’s persistent refusal to give our police service the funding they desperately need has left with us with no choice.

“The level of violent crime in London is unacceptably high. As well as setting up the new dedicated Violent Crime Taskforce to focus on the areas worst affected, I’m bringing together the Met Police with local councils, charities, community groups and others to work on a public health approach to tackling knife crime.

“We’ve also have created a new £45 million Young Londoners Fund to provide young people with positive alternatives to crime and to help those caught up in gangs to get into employment and training.

“The causes of violent crime are extremely complex, and involve culture, community, gangs, drugs, poverty and a lack of opportunities and have been made much worse by the Government’s huge cuts to the Metropolitan Police and youth services across our city, resulting in police numbers falling to the lowest level in 20 years. Cuts really do have consequences.”

The Mayor added: “I want to reassure Londoners that moving officers from the roads and traffic policing command is only a temporary measure. The Met will work to minimise the impact of their transfer, and policing our roads remains a key priority.”