Police Station Closures: Solihull and West Midlands

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Julian Knight]

Of course, I recognise that the non-frontline staff do very valuable work. However, as I will explain shortly, the police and crime commissioner cannot say that his cuts will make a substantive difference either to frontline services or to these non-frontline staff.

In my view, what Mr Jamieson has done is a straightforward breach of trust. When Shirley police station closed its doors in 2015, local residents were reassured that the Solihull branch offered a long-term future for a properly resourced local police presence. Now, less than three years later, it is to go, too. Instead of the Solihull branch, the commissioner proposes to have a front desk somewhere in the borough, but even though the consultation on that proposal is under way, we have not been told where that will be or what precisely it will comprise. Before Solihull police station is closed, I strongly believe that local residents have a right to know exactly what will replace it. At present, they are simply being told to trust Mr Jamieson—as I have already explained, they have no reason to do that.

Worse, research by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), who is here today to show her strength of feeling and support—as a Whip she is not permitted to speak—raises serious doubts about the extent to which the money raised from the sale of our police station can be redirected to frontline staff. According to the Library, police and crime commissioners are allowed to move funds from their capital to their revenue accounts only in very limited circumstances—primarily to deliver structural changes and to unlock long-term savings.

My constituents deserve to know whether—and how—Mr Jamieson actually intends to use the sale to boost local policing, as I have certainly heard nothing about new capital projects in Solihull or in any of the constituencies of my hon. Friends. It will not do for our police station to be sold to finance new programmes in other parts of the west midlands. My constituents should be given clear assurances that any revenue savings made by closing the station will be spent to boost local police services, and that there is not carte blanche to redirect them all over the place.

Not that local residents have had much of an opportunity to have their say—stakeholders have been offered only 18 working days to respond to the consultation, and originally no point of contact at all was provided for the general public. Only after a lot of chasing by my office was an email address finally provided for the public. Other concerned MPs, including my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, and I were not even given the courtesy of a call before the details were released to the press. My colleagues and I find that the commissioner is growing ever more autocratic in his dealings with us and our communities, issuing diktats from the centre against the will of local residents.

Solihull is a large town with a distinct character. Residents expect to see that fact reflected in their public services. Local Conservatives and I fought hard over the past few years to secure a devolution deal for the west midlands that brought power down from Westminster, while protecting the authority and independence of our local council. Decisions such as these will only confirm many of my constituents’ worst fears about how communities like Solihull risk getting short-changed by regional institutions that focus too heavily on major urban centres.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman must realise that West Midlands police received £444.1 million in 2017-18 and will receive the same amount under its budget for 2018-19. By any logic, that means there has been a cut somewhere. We are faced with the likely closure of at least three police stations in Coventry: Willenhall, Canley and Foleshill. Something has to give, and he should recognise that there has been a cut somewhere.

[Julian Knight]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is arguing for the closure of his local police stations. I certainly would not do that in this respect. I agree that there needs to be a reallocation of resources, and perhaps there are older properties that might be used more usefully, but at the heart of this issue and of the real anger in my community is the arbitrary way closures have been made, the lack of proper consultation and the fact that there seems to be no real path for the future of policing in Solihull. If the police and crime commissioner had come to us and said, “This is what will replace it. We recognise that your town has a large population and a growing issue with certain types of crime,”—I am about to touch on those—I would have said, “Okay, let’s have a conversation,” but he did not call. He just decided to make closures and release the details to the press.

The difficulty is that that brings devolution into a little disrepute. Of course Birmingham has its own policing needs and the commissioner has a duty to see that those are met. I am sure that the centralised and reactive policing model he appears to favour is better suited to urban trouble spots than to suburban and semi-rural communities, but boroughs such as Solihull face discrete policing challenges of their own. Residents often tell me of their serious concerns about so-called acquisitive crime, such as burglary, and vehicle crime, which is on the increase in the borough. Another potentially serious public order problem that Solihull has faced over the years—certainly since I have represented it in this place—is the repeated occupation every summer of our parks and open spaces by unauthorised encampments. Those events are a source of enormous disruption and distress for local residents, many of whom bring their concerns to my office or tell me about them on the doorstep. A strong local police presence is crucial to protecting communities such as Solihull from unauthorised Traveller encampments. When it comes to that, the reactive approach is the wrong approach.

I will close by saying that this is not the end of the fight. Mr Jamieson may have tried to push decisions through without proper consultation, but both in this place and on the ground in the west midlands, my colleagues and I will keep his proposals under the closest scrutiny, bring him to account and continue to make the case for a wiser and fairer deal for our constituents from this police and crime commissioner.

--- Later in debate ---

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Mr Hollobone, £145 million has been cut from the West Midlands police budget since 2010—a truly staggering cut for a police force to absorb. To set that in context, that money could have paid the salaries of 750 police constables over the past eight years—police constables who could have been patrolling our streets, tackling crime and antisocial behaviour.

Since the Conservative Government came to power in 2010, West Midlands police has lost 2,000 officers, taking their number to its lowest since 1974—the year the force was established. The demands on our officers, however, have not fallen in a similar fashion. If anything, they have increased, with emerging issues such as cyber-crime and the persistent threat of terrorism adding to the force’s already heavy workload.

The constant pressure exacted by the Conservative Government’s never-ending diktat to do more with less is taking its toll on our overstretched and under-resourced officers. On one day last summer, a check of the force sickness system revealed that 612 officers and staff were booked off sick, with 176 suffering mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, fatigue and stress. Given that West Midlands police now requires an additional £22 million simply to stand still, the chief constable is left with two choices, each as unpalatable as the other: to reduce manpower further or close police stations.

Let me be clear: despite efforts to blame the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner for making difficult decisions, the cuts have been inflicted on our constituents clearly and unambiguously as a result of the Conservative Government’s ideological austerity programme. As a result, the chief constable has proposed to release 24 buildings, which will save £5 million a year: enough to protect the jobs of 100 police officers. While I accept that the majority of the buildings to be closed are not open to the public, their closure will still have a detrimental impact on officers who will have to travel further to use essential services, wasting valuable police time.

We cannot ignore away the fact that the police grant settlement confirmed real-terms cuts, including a £12.5 million reduction in spending power for West Midlands police. The police and crime commissioner, David Jamieson, recently summed up the situation rather succinctly. He said:

“West Midlands police has suffered the biggest cuts in the country and now the Tory MPs who voted for those cuts recently are complaining about the consequences in their constituencies.”

It seems the irony is indeed lost on some.

The Government have argued that council tax can be increased by the PCC by up to £12 for a band D property, a measure that has been adopted by all but three PCCs. Despite that, West Midlands police has the lowest budget increase per head of population in the country, further damaging its ability to carry out its full range of duties. It has also been claimed that back-office costs have risen by £10 million, but, when one looks a little deeper, one sees that those so-called back office costs include nationally mandated pay increases, the hiring of specialist staff to allow police officers to carry out warranted duties such as arresting criminals and the hiring of call handlers to deal with the surge in demand faced by the police force.

These issues are only a snapshot of the systemic and unprecedented pressures faced by our police service. Police officers exude many of the most admirable characteristics of our society. Brave, caring and committed, they do their duty to allow us to go about our daily lives, safe in the knowledge that we and our families are safe.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Recently, in the Willenhall area of Coventry there have been public meetings where the public have voiced concern about increases in drugs, burglaries and so forth. As a result, the police have looked at the possibility of using surge tactics in those areas. That demonstrates how the public are becoming aware of the under-policing in Coventry—we have lost between 200 and 300 officers—and they are uneasy about the policing and crime situation in the west midlands, starting in Coventry.

[Preet Kaur Gill]

I absolutely agree. Police officers join the force because they want to make a difference, serve their communities and help people. We accept their service gratefully, but, in so doing, we also accept a responsibility to offer them the same protection and support that they provide us. Policing cannot be done on the cheap; the safety of our families is worth too much. That is why I will continue to stand up for my local police force and my constituents by continuing to oppose the Government’s damaging and dangerous cuts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne]

There has been a provision for counter-terrorism policing, but, as the right hon. Gentleman knows better than I do, neighbourhood policing is the frontline of the fight against terrorism in this country. The stronger the frontline, the safer we are. In the west midlands, our frontline is being cut to shreds.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

My right hon. Friend will notice that in an intervention earlier I mentioned Willenhall in particular, where there have been public meetings. It is strange when we talk about fighting terrorism that there is a police station in that area in which high-profile prisoners are kept. I wonder where in the west midlands they will put them if there are any further arrests.

[Liam Byrne]

Exactly. Those threats are now multiplying across the region.

I respect the task that the Police Minister has to try to perform. He has taken the time to listen to representations from west midlands MPs of all political stripes. I am afraid that he was not backed up by either the Prime Minister or the Chancellor; they did not give the Home Office in general, and him in particular, the financial settlement that we needed in order to safeguard our communities. For us in Hodge Hill, that means that we now have the proposed closure of the Shard End police base—something that both Councillor Ian Ward and I disagree with.

We need a police base in Shard End, because—as was explained to me during my own glorious fortnight as the Minister for police and counter-terrorism, before I went on to serve a further two years as a Home Office Minister—neighbourhood policing creates a different kind of relationship between the police service and the community. It unlocks a level of trust, intelligence and insight that makes it much easier to crack down on crime. When we shut down police bases, we weaken the frontline in that fight. I do not want to see crime, drug dealing and violent crime rise any further. That is why I call on the Minister today to fix the problem in the West Midlands Police finances, give us the money we deserve and let our brave men and women of the West Midlands Police service get on with the job they are so dedicated to doing.