A parish council has rejected claims that it misled the public over the purchase of a police station – saying it genuinely believes buying the building will help policing in the area.
As reported last week, Iver Parish Council is in the process of purchasing Iver Police Station from Thames Valley Police (TVP) for £750,000, despite widespread anger in the community that it will be a waste of money and is not needed.
At a public meeting residents accused the council of misleading them in a consultation document, when it claimed that buying the police station ‘was vital to maintain a police presence in the parish’. The Angry Iver group said this was trying to instil fear into residents during the consultation when in reality a police superintendent, Yvette Hitch, had stated TVP would maintain a presence in the village regardless of the sale.
But this week the council said it still believed a base for the police was vital in the Ivers – and the purchase would go someway to providing that.
Dr Wendy Matthews, chair of the parish council, said it was in negotiations with TVP over how much space it would have in the council-owned station, once a sale goes through. She said there had been ‘no indication’ that the police did not want to be based there.
She said: “If you do not have a touchdown base in the area then they (the police) won’t go there, it’s simple as that. If you have the police visiting you have to have a base for them.
“We are negotiating with them at the moment to see how much space they want to lease back from us.”
Dr Matthews said the base in the building would likely be for the local Neighbourhood policing team, consisting mainly of police community support officers (PCSOs). But she said some kind of base would allow for any visiting police staff to come in and work there, with the possibility of a counter service for members of the public.
The consultation proved controversial since it showed that 79 per cent of residents were in favour of the council taking out a £500,000 loan to help pay for the building, with £27,000 to be paid back through the precept, per year, for 25 years. Residents said not enough people had taken part in the consultation because they did not know about it – and the 201 responses only constituted two per cent of the population.
Dr Matthews said however that the number of responses appeared proportionate as similarly the local plan consultation recently only generated 300 replies.
Article originally published by Slough & South Bucks Observer
