Sue Buckle presents the community’s concerns about the police move to MP Hilary Benn

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The police want to move from their Belle Vue Road depot to a new location on The police want to move from their Belle Vue Road depot to a new location on the university campus. They say the move has been made necessary by the need for costly repairs to the depot, and the opportunity to reduce annual overheads from £130,000 to £20,000 per annum. This afternoon, Sue Buckle, chair of South Headingley Community Association, presented MP Hilary Benn with a list of the community’s concerns:

  1. Why has it suddenly come about that all these repairs are necessary?
  2. Why haven’t the police been maintaining their estate?
  3. Why are they refusing to produce a copy of any report showing what repairs are necessary and copies of estimates showing the cost of carrying them out?
  4. Why have the police only considered premises on the university campus?
  5. Why is there no report with cost benefit analysis showing the evaluation of a number of alternatives?
  6. Why are they rushing into signing an agreement they’ll be tied into for years?
  7. Why was Commander Oldroyd telling us on the 9th May that it’s a “done deal” when the deadline for objections to their planning application 12/01402/FU is today the 18th May? Surely they’ve not signed a tenancy agreement with the university in advance of obtaining planning permission.
  8. Given that Norman Bettison is so keen on co-location with the community, why didn’t they consider Swarthmore or Royal Park School?
  9. How will the police deal with complaints against the university, when the university is their landlord? Haven’t the police learnt any lessons from the phone hacking scandal?
  10. Why were elected members not consulted?
  11. Why has the local community not been consulted?
  12. Why are police of the North West Division moving to a site that’s on the boundary with the police’s City and Holbeck Division? How can it be efficient to base police officers belonging to the North West Division immediately adjacent to the City and Holbeck Division?
  13. How can it be efficient to base the police within the university campus, a site which already has its own security staff? This must be the safest location in the city. It will take PCSOs 10 minutes walking through the campus before they reach the residential areas to the north.
  14. Commander Oldroyd says the annual overheads at the Belle Vue Road depot are £130,000. He says the rent at the university campus site will be £20,000 and that there will be savings of over £100,000. How can the savings be so great, when the police own the Belle Vue Road depot and pay no rent for it?
  15. Why is the council’s Highways department accepting that there will be no parking implications when 170 police get transferred to the university campus, most of whom use cars? It’s true the university say they will allocate 22 spaces to the police. But the university doesn’t even have sufficient spaces for its own staff. In fact, the situation is so bad in and around the university that university staff park their cars on residential streets in Hyde Park.

Mr Benn promised to take these issues up with Commander Oldroyd.

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For an account of a recent meeting between the police and the community called specifically to discuss this issue, please see this article.

And for further information relating to the move, please see this article.

3 thoughts on “Sue Buckle presents the community’s concerns about the police move to MP Hilary Benn”

  1. This is a badly thought out proposal, resulting from the attacks on students in the Autumn. It states, “the Local Division has invested time and effort into negotiations with Leeds University with regard to obtaining access to premises in or around the University Campus,” also “the integration of the Police into University premises assists the University strategy to become ranked with the top universities worldwide.”

    This proposal will not make students safer but less safe, diverting police presence from the areas they live in to the already well patrolled areas on and immediately around the University.

    The police should not move until there has been proper consultation with our councillors and the whole community. It is clear from the meeting we had last week that there are likely to be other much more viable solutions, if proper consultation takes place, rather than rushing into this bad solution. The current building may not be perfect, but it seems much more fit for purpose than the current proposal. If the roof leaks above areas used for parking, does that matter in the short term?

    I very much welcome Hilary Benn’s involvement. Hopefully he can persuade the police to consult, where the rest of us have failed.

  2. Janet’s right. All the evidence points to Commander Oldroyd setting out to obtain premises on the university campus. At Swarthmore, he told us at least four times that he wasn’t ‘getting into bed with the university.’ That’s four times more than was necessary. Me thinks Commander, thou doth protest too much.

    It’s wrong for such a major decision to be made by one man with no accountability. Any help our MP can give us to get this proposal subjected to a democratic review is to be welcomed.

  3. In their planning application, the police claim that the move will enable them to offer students a better service. Since there’s to be no increase in police numbers, this necessarily means that local residents will be offered a worse service.

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