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Camden New Journal - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 6 December 2007

Warehouse-style police base comes under fire

Critics of HQ plan concerned at loss of high-street presence

POLICE plans to move officers to a warehouse-style base and to “review the future” of police stations in Hampstead and Kentish Town have met with scepticism and dismay.
Delegates at Camden’s chief community safety forum have questioned proposals to cut the number of traditional, high-street police stations and to concentrate officers in a multi-purpose building, probably on an industrial estate.
“What ordinary people want is police on the streets, the presence of a police station where more foot-patrolling police can be accommodated,” said South End Green Association chairwoman Pam Gilbey, echoing the comments of other delegates at a police and community consultative group meeting on Thursday.
Aileen Hammond, a member of Belsize Residents Association, said: “I am concerned about having one operational base in Camden. It is over five miles from top to bottom through some of the most heavily congested traffic and streets in London.”
Borough commander Chief Superintendent Mark Heath briefed the forum on an asset management plan drawn up by the Met’s property experts and published last week in advance of a three-month public consultation.
The plan includes a pledge to keep police stations open until alternative “front-counter facilities” are available. It details the need for modern custody facilities and patrol briefing centres to replace obsolete Victorian police stations.
“The plan is a broad template,” Chief Supt Heath said. “It gives us far more flexibility in terms of the way we use our assets for the future. The Met is not going to deal with ‘trophy’ police stations any more.”
Metropolitan Police Authority member Richard Sumray maintained the plan was about raising standards.
“Location and police bases are only a tool to achieve that...” he added. “There is no intention to move police away from different parts of Camden borough.”
But delegates were sceptical about whether the public consultation could affect the review’s outcome and about Mr Sumray’s assertion that the plan, which includes the disposal of Hampstead police station, the most valuable in the Met, was not financially motivated.
Conservative councillor Andrew Mennear said: “It’s said this is a locally focused review but I don’t see how it is. I don’t understand how there is going to be more access to communities – how one patrol base will be able to get to residents quicker than teams currently at three bases.”
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Councillor Flick Rea asked: “What in this asset plan is actually open to change, bearing in mind comments from the public?”
Mr Sumray assured the meeting: “If we did not want to listen to people’s views we wouldn’t have asked for a consultation.”

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