A lesson learned over plan to close police station

HOORAH! Common sense has prevailed and the rush to turf our police out of their station to make way for a University Technical College turns out not to have been so essential after all.

With all the authorities apparently dead set on 2014 as the launch date for the new school, it was Chief Constable Patrick Geenty who wisely called for extra time in the end, admitting he was “not satisfied” that police would be able to maintain their current level of service.

Last month in my newspaper column I voiced the concerns of serving officers about the same thing, only to be accused of “falling into bad habits” as a journalist in a letter from UTC project chief Gordon Aitken.

I’m not infallible (don’t tell my husband) but on this occasion I was right.

One thing I hadn’t realised, until Mr Aitken pointed it out, was that the UTC will only take in “around three students per year group” from each of Salisbury’s secondary schools.

The rest, he explained, will commute from a 20-mile radius, with 46 feeder schools in all.

As I’ve said previously, I see nothing wrong with a UTC in principle. But it doesn’t sound as many local children will benefit from it.

And whilst a “sub regional centre of excellence” may be a desirable extra for the chosen few, for their employers, and for local politicians seeking a bit of glory to bask in, it’s the general public of Salisbury who will pay the price unless Mr Geenty can say in a year’s time that he’s convinced the loss of the police station will have no adverse effect.

People may well feel inclined to ask whether it’s a fair exchange. That’s a question which could be avoided if an alternative site could be found for the UCT.

I do hope this breathing space will be used, at the very least, to reconsider plans to base response cars at Amesbury.

We’ve been told up until now that this won’t affect how long it takes officers to reach an emergency in Salisbury.

But unless the force intends to recruit the new Time Lord, Peter Capaldi, and beam bobbies about the place in his old police telephone box, logic suggests this can't be true.

In another recent letter to the Salisbury Journal, Police and Crime Commissioner Angus Macpherson stated that the "direction of travel" on this whole project was agreed between Wiltshire Council and the old Police Authority back in 2011.

I'm sure he is correct. I just don't remember anyone bothering to mention it to the public at the time, or in the run-up to May's elections.

The decisions that really matter are all too often presented to taxpayers as faits accomplis, and this climbdown shows what a bad strategy that can be.