First the Post Offices, then the hospitals, and now.....

We feared, when the Government was trying to enforce amalgamation of police forces, that policing was likely to become more remote, with less fixed police presence in some smaller communities.

Little did we realise that well before the amalgamations, there had been a whole series of police station closures. The Sunday Telegraph reported last Sunday that since 1997 over 600 hundred have closed, and a further 40 are under threat in the next 12 months. About half have been replaced, often on a very limited basis – small rooms, away from town centres, and staffed by PCSOs.

Worse still, even where police stations have been retained, it is often on a “9 to 5” basis. (Jack Large, aged 14, was stabbed to death outside an unmanned station at Chigwell, Essex, recently.) The Sunday telegraph reports surveys which reveal that only about one station in eight is open 24 hours a day. In fact 18 out of 43 police forces do not have a single station open 24 hours a day.

So where will our gallant police officers be, if we need them? In many cases they will be located at centres not available to the public. If we see them in our locality, it will be riding in a car with a blue flashing light. Otherwise, presumably they will be doing all the government-required paperwork, until they- are interrupted, very unreasonably, as the result of a telephone call from a member of the public in some distant place.

The lack of local availability means that officers will spend more time in travelling, and have even less time for walking a beat.

Wealthier residents in Primrose Hill, Camden, London, and in other places, are beginning to hire private security guards to patrol the streets. They have given up on the 827 police Officers, 169 other staff and 98 CSOs. It seems that in places like Camden, out of every seven hours in duty, six are spent in admin and meal breaks!

Residents in Cricklade, North Wiltshire, have a police station in the High Street, but no resident has yet been able to find anyone to come to the counter to deal with them. This despite the assurance of the Chief Constable, that it was manned and officers would come if they were not tied up! He asked people to keep attending, or the accountants would feel they had justification in recommending closure. Keep attending an effectively closed station, or it will be closed!