Update: A serving Metropolitan police officer from Stevenage has been charged with rape, the Crown Prosecution Service has revealed.

PC David Carrick, 46, from Stevenage, was charged with rape by Hertfordshire constabulary on Sunday.

Carrick worked in the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command and was arrested on Saturday [October 2] by Herts police. He was suspended the same day by the Metropolitan police.

The officer was off duty in Hertfordshire at the time the force said, with the alleged attack on a woman taking place on the night of September 4, 2020 in St Albans.

The force said it was awaiting the outcome of criminal proceedings, adding a referral had been made to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

Carrick will appear via video link at Hatfield magistrates court on Monday.

Metropolitan police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said: "I am deeply concerned to hear the news that an officer from the Met's parliamentary and diplomatic protection command has been arrested and now charged with this serious offence.

"I fully recognise the public will be very concerned too. Criminal proceedings must now take their course, so I am unable to comment any further at this stage."