‘Public are disillusioned with remote police forces’
AFORMER Police and Crime Commissioner said the public have become “disillusioned” with the police after nearly half of force stations have been closed in the UK.
Ian Johnston, who was the first Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent, was responding to an investigation which found the number of police stations across the UK had almost halved over the last seven years.
The move means that nearly 400 stations with front counters, giving the public direct access to police officers, have been closed.
Mr Johnston said: “We all know, being born in Wales and being Welsh, that it’s made up of lots of close communities and people do like to talk. If they’ve got a problem, they want to go to the police station and discuss it.
“I know it’s expensive to run police stations, but yet again the police are getting further and further removed from the public.
“It’s about the public seeing a face, even if they’ve got no need to go to the police station, if they know they’ve got one there if they need it, they’ll go there.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that lots of information that the public would have given to the police years ago, they’re not going to now because the police station is not open.”
Following the investigation by the Mail on Sunday, the National Police Chiefs Council said that the police are “now far more accessible online”.
But Mr Johnston disagreed with that, calling it “nonsense”.
He said: “This nonsense from the National Police Chief’s Council about most of our business done online, my experience is that just doesn’t wash with the communities.
“When you’ve got quite large towns that have not got a police station open now, then people become disillusioned.”
In his role as Police and Crime Commissioner, Mr Johnston fought to keep police counters open in Gwent – reversing the decision of the chief constable at the time to try and close 17 desks across the force area.
Ystrad Mynach police station had its front counter reopened and Mr Johnston also extended the opening hours at the Abertillery and Brynmawr stations.
He said: “This was agenda item number one every time, about what if you do get elected, what are you going to do about the police stations? The public really do care about whether they’re open or not.”
Now Mr Johnston says his biggest fear is that more police stations will close.
He said: “If we’re not careful, this will become a points-scoring contest between the Government and the Labour Party and other parties. But the reality is, despite what Theresa May said when she was Home Secretary and now Prime Minister, the cuts that the Government are imposing are having a very, very negative effect on policing.
“One of the consequences is that the Chief Constables and the Commissioners haven’t got the money, they’ve cut the staff, they can’t cut them anymore, and now they’ll be shutting police stations.”
Jeff Mapps, a retired police officer and former Chair of the Police Federations in Wales and Gwent, said: “Police forces have had some stark choices to make between officer and staff members versus buildings, and that has created some issues in terms of service delivery for the public because police officers are not stationed as close to where they were previously. Travelling distance has increased and pressure to answer calls in a timely fashion then creates problems again.
“The reality is it comes down to a lack of funding for the service overall from the government.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “Police officers across the country do a uniquely challenging and absolutely vital job keeping us safe and secure. It’s thanks to their hard work that crimes traditionally measured by the independent survey for England and Wales have fallen by more than a third since 2010. There are now over 470,000 fewer violent crimes than seven years ago.
“The Government has protected overall police spending in real terms since the 2015 Spending Review.”