Image caption Eight people were killed when three attackers drove into pedestrians on London Bridge and then stabbed people in Borough Market

Police and security services are to get more powers and resources to stop terror attacks at an earlier stage, according to the Sunday Times.

It says the new government anti-terror strategy proposes sharing information about suspects more widely, according to a leaked draft which it has seen.

It follows a review of last year's attacks in Manchester and London.

The Home Office would not comment on the leaked report but has promised a "comprehensive" strategy.

Some of the attackers involved in last year's terror attacks at Westminster, London Bridge and Manchester, which saw 35 people killed, had been known to the police and intelligence services.

That sparked calls for changes to be made to the UK's counter-terrorism laws.

The intelligence agency MI5 has information on more than 23,000 "subjects of interest", but only around 3,000 are under active investigation.

The Sunday Times reports that the new strategy will enable counter-terrorism investigators to warn other agencies - government departments, councils, devolved administrations and local police forces - about suspects on their radar before they are considered dangerous enough to be placed under MI5 surveillance.

'Change of approach'

It is claimed the plan, due to be published in the next few weeks, also calls for more focus on "communities where the threat from terrorism and radicalisation is highest".

It would also introduce longer prison terms for terror offences, as well as more intensive monitoring when people are released from jail.

A "change of approach" is required, according to the leaked report, as the threat of terrorism is "higher" since the last counter-terrorism strategy was published in 2011.

Last year Home Secretary Amber Rudd set out her intention to increase the maximum sentence for people who repeatedly view terrorist content online to 15 years.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "The updated counter-terrorism strategy, which is still being finalised, will be a comprehensive and cross-cutting response to the evolving threat from domestic and international terrorism.

"The home secretary has made crystal clear her determination to leave no safe space for terrorists to act or recruit and to keep our families, communities and country safe." </s> The terror threat level in the UK has been reduced from critical to severe and soldiers deployed to key sites around the country will begin to be withdrawn from Monday, Theresa May has said.

The prime minister said Operation Temperer, in which military personnel were deployed to bolster security in the wake of the Manchester bombing, would be scaled back after the bank holiday weekend.

Security officials had advised the government to raise the terror threat to critical, which means they believe an attack is imminent, after a suicide bomber killed 22 people, including children, at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester on Monday.

Additional resources were deployed to help with the investigation into the attack and provide greater security at a host of weekend events. It is normal for a critical terror threat level to be maintained for just a few days.

May said: “The public should be clear about what this means. A threat level of severe means an attack remains highly likely. The country should remain vigilant.”

Speaking after a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee on Saturday, she said the decision had been taken after “a significant amount of police activity” over the last 24 hours.

The Manchester bombing was the worst terror attack to hit Britain since the 7 July attacks in London in 2005.

On Saturday a street in Manchester’s Moss Side was evacuated by counter-terrorism officers and controlled explosives were used in a raid on a property in Cheetham Hill.

Boscombe Street was said to been cleared on Saturday morning. A witness said a bomb-disposal van was parked at the junction with Yew Tree Road.

An address in the area was being searched by detectives as they sought to close the net on the suspected terror cell behind Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi.

Two men aged 20 and 22 were arrested in the early hours of Saturday morning at the Cheetham Hill address, police said. Neighbours identified Yahya and Mohamed Werfalli, aged 20 and 22, as two of the occupants of the raided house. They were said to be of Libyan descent and part of the same friendship groups as the Manchester bomber.

Police have not confirmed the identities of any of those arrested in connection with the investigation. Eleven people remain in custody.

On Saturday afternoon Britain’s top counter-terrorism officer, assistant commissioner Mark Rowley, said officers had carried out 17 searches, mostly in the north-west.

He told reporters: “We are getting a greater understanding of the preparation of the bomb. There is still much more to do. There will be more arrests.

“There will be more searches but the greater clarity and progress has led JTAC, the independent body which assesses threat, to the judgment that an attack is no longer imminent.”

The threat level was raised on Tuesday over fears the network linked to Abedi was at large, possibly with access to further explosives and intent on attacking again.

The decision to drop the threat level down one grade to severe means intelligence analysts are satisfied that risk is now under sufficient control.

On Friday, Rowley said: “We have already got a large part of the network including some very significant arrests and some significant finds. Clearly, we haven’t covered all the territory we want to but we have covered a large part of it so our confidence has been increasing on recent days. But there’s still more to do to get the degree of confidence we want.”

By Saturday morning analysts at the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which sets the threat level, were satisfied the danger posed by the network linked to the Manchester bomber had lessened through arrests and also after examination of materials seized after a string on raids starting on Tuesday.

There is still concern among counter-terrorism officials about the network linked to Abedi, the Guardian understands, but JTAC believes this is insufficient to state an attack may be imminent.

Although the threat level has been scaled back, Rowley said there would still be a heightened security presence at events over the bank holiday weekend.

In a statement on Saturday afternoon he said: “For practical reasons and precautionary reasons, we made the decision that the resources that we had planned for this weekends events will continue. They will still see that high level of policing presence – some armed, some unarmed.”

But he added that after the bank holiday the range of additional resources deployed in the wake of the Manchester attack would be stepped down. He added that the military support would also be “phased out” in the coming days.

The threat level of severe means an attack is highly likely. The two months since 22 March, when five people including the attacker died in an attack on Westminster, have seen a particularly high level of activity by terrorists.



A total of seven attack plots are publicly known about, with two causing casualties, in Westminster and Manchester. Five more were disrupted and arrests made; four in London and one in Birmingham.

The investigation into the Manchester attack continues and is being carried out by counter-terrorism officers and the domestic security service MI5.
Following recent attacks in Manchester and London, The Sunday Times says a leaked Home Office report reviewing the attacks proposes a new strategy increasing information sharing on terror suspects from MI5 to other organisations before they are considered to require surveillance. Also included are harsher sentences for terror offences, and additional attention on "communities where the threat from terrorism and radicalisation is highest".