MEMBERS of the public will no longer be able to walk in and report a crime at Bangor Police Station as PSNI budget cuts continue to bite.
News of the shock plan was made to politicians on Friday by the borough’s most senior police officer, superintendent Johnston McDowell, who explained the enquiry office at the Castle Park Avenue base will close within three months.
North Down residents will now have to travel to Newtownards police station to make a report or seek advice as both Donaghadee and Holywood police stations were closed some years ago.
The Bangor station custody suite was also closed a number of years ago and politicians have voiced concerns that the enquiry desk closure is the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ that will see police ‘abandon’ the station in the future.
The Bangor enquiry office is one of 28 ‘front desks’ that are currently open to the public across Northern Ireland but it is one of 11 enquiry offices set to close due to an ‘insufficient’ police budget.
The ‘front counters’ are operated by Station Enquiry Assistants (SEAs) who are employed by a private sector contractor as part of a managed services contract.
Politicians have united in their condemnation of the ‘disappointing’ enquiry office closures which in total are expected to save the police service over £400,000 per year.
North Down MP Stephen Farry described the closure as the ‘further retreat’ in front line policing and he urged the PSNI to ‘reflect on its decision and impact’ as the ‘sums involved in operating the enquiry desks are relatively small’.
Ulster Unionist MLA Alan Chambers said he would have liked to have seen ‘more public consultation’ on the closure proposals and feared ‘what we are seeing may be the thin edge of the wedge and sometime in the future we will see the police forced to abandon the station building in Bangor’.
Independent Unionist MLA Alex Easton stated the closure was ‘not acceptable’ given that there would now only be one enquiry office to serve the whole of the borough and Bangor City boasted the biggest population.
Announcing the Bangor enquiry desk closure, District Commander McDowell stated the decision had not been ‘taken lightly’ and he ‘wanted to be clear that the stations are not closing’.
Welcoming the return of the Assembly and the ‘positive news’ about the funding allocation for public sector pay awards, the police chief said the ‘reality is that the strategic outlook for policing remains stark’.
The District Commander said the police budget ‘remains insufficient and is not sustainable’ and that because of the ‘current and financial pressures’ it had been ‘necessary to review services to make savings in order to deliver a sustainable and effective organisation’.
He said that following an ‘extensive review’ which included analysis of the volume and type of demand in enquiry offices, the decision had been taken to reduce the number of operational enquiry offices from 28 to 17.
Stressing the station would not be closing Superintendent McDowell said: “Police officers and staff will continue to work from them serving the community and there will be no impact on station security.”
He went on to say: “Our analysis shows that even with the reduced arrangement over 90% of households in Northern Ireland are within 15 miles of a station enquiry office. The average household is 10.7 miles from their nearest office, an increase of four miles, or 18.5 minutes by car, an increase of 1.5 minutes.”
The district commander stressed that the Ards and North Down policing team would ‘continue to serve this community with professionalism’ and were ‘committed to protecting the people of Northern Ireland to the best of our ability’.
