Police front counter facing axe
ROSSENDALE’S last remaining police front counter could be at risk of closure as part of swingeing budget cuts.
Lancashire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Clive Grunshaw has confirmed that the future of all the county’s front counters, including Waterfoot, is being reviewed as part of £18m worth of savings by 2020.
No decision has yet been made, but a ‘ pro- posal will be developed for public consultation’.
If the public-facing counter at the £3m Rossendale station - opened on Bacup Road in 2008 - were to close, residents would have to travel outside the borough to Burnley (assuming that stays open) to speak face to face to officers or present documents.
The Free Press has reported in recent weeks how residents and businesses are becoming increasingly concerned over a massive rise in burglaries with over 1,300 left unsolved across the Valley over the last three years. Police chiefs insist the building would stay open as a ‘station’ as officers would still use it as a base, even if the public counter is shut.
Rossendale MP Jake Berry said ‘ no further changes should be proposed or tolerated’.
He said: “While I can appreciate that policing is changing across Lancashire due to the need to make savings, here in Rossendale our counter services have already been cut to the bare minimum. No further changes should be proposed or tolerated. We can’t be the only borough in the whole of Lancashire with no counter service.”
In 2011 the Valley was left with just one police front desk after station buildings at Haslingden, Rawtenstall and Bacup were closed and sold off.
Bacup councillor Jimmy Eaton said the station at Waterfoot needs to be kept open as a priority.
He said: “I appreciate there are cuts and savings throughout Lancashire but we are going to be out on a limb if that goes. I would fight my utmost to keep that desk open. It’s a very important place for people to go.”
Rachel Baines, Lancashire branch chair of the Police Federation, said further budget cuts mean the ‘closure of front coun- ters, less police officers and less visibility’.
She said: “To me the police stations are iconic in the community for people to connect with and gives them a perception and feeling of safety. It’s very sad.”
Haslingden MP Graham Jones said government funding cuts to the police have ‘gone too far’.