Old mill to be centre for global training

POLICE WILL RECOVER PHONE INFO

POLICE officers from around the world are to be trained how to recover data from mobile phones and laptops at a new “laboratory” in a former woollen mill on the outskirts of Huddersfield.

Part of the six-storey Titanic Mills complex in Linthwaite will be given over to the information-tracing facility, which will operate on behalf of the police as well as Trading Standards, the Health and Safety Executive and other foreign bodies.

Planners on Kirklees Council who approved the lab in the Grade II listed building heard it will receive computer equipment and telephones to be tested as part of data recovery operations.

The laboratory will also offer training to officers from the UK and overseas, some of whom will receive accommodation in 30 single-bed rooms to be created on the mill’s fourth floor.

The plan was passed despite more than 40 objections from local people.

Some questioned whether such a facility was appropriate in a residential area – the complex has scores of flats as well as a health spa.

Others sought reassurances whether chemicals, flammable or otherwise, and gas cylinders would be stored on the site.

Clr Rob Walker (Lab, Colne Valley) supported the plan but said he had concerns over what he described as the “policing and enforcement” of the type of work being carried out.

Planning consultant Andrew Keeling stressed that the training facility would be for professional adults.

He said: “This is not a Freshers’ Week bedroom facility. This is for professional staff mainly in the hospitality industry and for training in customer care.

“Those people will come from all over Europe. The company that wants to run this already runs these courses and these people will come from far and wide.”

Prior to members of the Huddersfield Planning Sub-Committee voting on the project senior planning officer Teresa Harlow advised that the council would not be able to directly control the specific use of the lab.

She said: “The regulatory regimes of that are outside planning. It would be impossible for us to say that you can’t store chemicals because that wouldn’t be a precise or reasonable condition.”