Shoreditch Police Station to be axed in ‘drastic’ shake-up
Future in doubt: Shoreditch Police Station. Photograph: Google Streetview
One of Hackney’s two police stations is to be scrapped, London’s mayor Sadiq Khan has announced.
Shoreditch Police Station on Shepherdess Walk has been earmarked for closure, with the 24-hour front counter in Stoke Newington set to stay.
According to a draft strategy published by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac), 1.1 crimes per day are reported at the Shoreditch nick, compared to five in Stoke Newington.
The proposals will see 40 of London’s 73 front counters shut, leaving one 24-hour counter in each of the capital’s 32 boroughs.
Khan said government cuts had left him with “no choice but to take drastic action”, adding: “My top priority is keeping Londoners safe, and every pound saved by closing a front counter is a pound of savings that we do not have to find by reducing the frontline.
“By freeing up officers and moving them closer to their communities, they will be able to spend more time on the beat to tackle the issues that matter most to Londoners, such as knife crime, anti-social behaviour, hate crime and extremism, and domestic abuse.”
The Metropolitan Police has had to find £600 million in savings since 2010, with a further £400 million needed over the next four years.
Khan went on to say: “We will still be able to maintain a 24/7 front counter service in every borough and are improving the telephone and online services that Londoners value so highly.
“The government urgently needs to properly fund the Met police so that they can do their job and keep Londoners safe.”
The Mopac report also outlines a number of other planned closures in Hackney, including Safer Neighbourhoods (SN) bases on Haggerston Road, Orsman Road, Shacklewell Lane and Theydon Road.
These places are where SN teams start and end their patrols, and some also serve as non-urgent contact points where residents can meet their local police officers face-to-face.
In a joint foreword for the Mopac report, Khan’s policing chief Sophie Linden and Met Commissioner Cressida Dick said cuts had forced them to make “tough choices”.
The pair want to hear from Londoners about how they can “mobilise communities and involve local people” in crime prevention, adding: “While the direction of travel is broadly settled, this document asks a number of questions, particularly about how we should improve public engagement, and we look forward to hearing from Londoners in the coming weeks and months.”
The consultation is open until 6 October.
To take a look at the plans and have your say, visit the Mayor’s website here
It’s a fair idea to try and make policing more local and this has long been a Lib Dem objective, but if it were really about that, the Mayor would be putting more resources into neighbourhood police offices – but he is shutting them down too. This is purely a slash and burn cost-cutting measure that will leave us less safe.
Making services available online is a great idea too, but without a real life way to access the police, many vulnerable older people and the digitally excluded will find themselves with no easy access to police services.
If prevention is better than cure, we should be expanding access to community policing, not reducing it.
One reason given for closing this police station is the small number of people using it. Well that might well be because it is almost impossible to access it. Have often been on the bus going past and seen people desperately trying to get in. This is the well known tactic of engineering “lack of need” by making the service unusable.
It is a fallacy to assume that if only 1.1 crimes a day are reported at Shoreditch police station, then its front counter is unused the rest of the time. Every time that I’ve gone in there, there have been several other members of the public waiting to be seen.
Going to the Stoke Newington station to report a crime, or for any other reason, is a waste of time. There are already far more people waiting there, which the closure of the Shoreditch station will obviously increase, thus ensuring that every visit will take even longer for every law-abiding member of the public who goes to that station for whatever reason – with, in my experience, very little if any positive result.
Stoke Newington is notoriously user-unfriendly to decent people, who have no incentive to go there if they can possibly avoid doing so. There is no point concentrating police resources in one station if that station treats every member of the public who goes there as a criminal. That simply deters decent folk from co-operating with, or expecting decent service from, the police.
This is a disquieting move, and whilst placed in context of overall cuts or efficiencies, simply highlights the need for a reversal of the cuts. One can’t help shake the feeling that given reports of the property being worth over £80million that the value becomes a driving force rather than serving the needs of the community. Shoreditch and the nighttime economy is a key producer of anti-social behaviour and activity that demands a localise police presence. Similarly, other areas, such as Mare Street have long been identified as a risk area, and again with the growth in licensed properties and late night drinking, it and other areas will continue to produce a need that the police will struggle to serve from Stoke Newington. Better and more joined up thinking is needed on managing the area both within the police and within Hackney council and their willingness to hand out alcohol licences.