Reopening Local Police Stations

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) on securing this important debate. Crime has been on the rise in London, except during the pandemic. But despite a rising rate of violent crime, and particularly knife crime, as the hon. Gentleman said, 71 police stations have closed since 2010. Many of those were under the watch of the Prime Minister when he was Mayor of London. Police numbers have been slashed, not least in my own borough of Richmond where not only have police numbers been cut but police are routinely extracted to go and police incidents and events elsewhere.

I was grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning the campaign to keep Wimbledon police station open. Although he is no longer here, I am delighted to hear that the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) has thrown his weight behind Liberal Democrat councillor Paul Kohler’s campaign. He was the lecturer who was beaten up very badly and mounted a strong campaign to save Wimbledon police station. It was his successful legal challenge against the Mayor of London that saved Wimbledon police station. He continues to campaign to keep it open.

In my borough of Richmond upon Thames, we had Richmond police station close a few years ago and, now, Teddington police station in my constituency is on the brink of closure, despite violent knife-related incidents going up. Just two weeks ago, an 18-year-old Afghan refugee and Richmond upon Thames College student, Hazrat Wali, was stabbed to death in broad daylight close to the college. A few months ago in Teddington, less than a mile away from the police station that is about to be closed, another young person was stabbed—thankfully, not fatally on that occasion. Earlier this year in Richmond there was another fatal stabbing.

As the hon. Member for South Dorset said, one of the ways to tackle violent crime and knife crime is through community policing. We need more police officers on our streets. The Government have made a commitment to boost police officer numbers. Where will they go if all the police stations are closed? They need to be housed somewhere. The problem, which we will see following the closure of Teddington police station, is that when police stations close, local neighbourhood teams have far further to travel to get the area they are policing.

The safer neighbourhood teams for Teddington and Hampton Wick wards will have to be based out of Twickenham police station. That increases their travel time. If they are walking or taking the bus, no doubt that travel time will be increased even further because when a member of the public sees a uniformed police officer, they may well stop them along the way outside the neighbourhood they are meant to be looking after. Obviously, if they see something untoward happening, they will need to take action. If we want to boost community policing, which is essential to preventing crime and saving lives, police officers need to be based close to the areas that they are policing.

The other issue is fewer custody suites. Talking to my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) and the leader of Richmond council, we discussed one of the challenges since Richmond police station closed, which is that we have fewer custody suites. The police are having to decide whether to charge someone they have stopped in Richmond town centre or other parts of Richmond on that side of the river, or to take hours out of their shift taking that person down to Kingston or Twickenham police stations.

It must be said that police stations offer some level of comfort and security to members of the public, and with rising knife crime and violent crime, I venture to say that Londoners would like to see more, not fewer, police stations. That visible police presence is critical for both reporting crime and communicating with the police, and that is more important now than ever when confidence in the Metropolitan Police Service in particular is plummeting. I appreciate that a fully-fledged police station may not be needed, given that more people are reporting crime online or by telephone, but some sort of visible police presence through a counter of some sort—there must be innovative and interesting ways we can think about that—is very important.

The deputy Mayor for policing, the Met police and the Public Accounts Committee have all made abundantly clear to me in a number of recent meetings that the driver behind the sale of all these police stations in London is to raise money for operational purposes. That suggests to me that Home Office funding needs to be looked at to meet those operational needs, but we must also remember that those capital receipts will only last so long if they are being ploughed into operational needs. In the case of Teddington, some of that capital receipt when they sell the building should be ploughed into a base for the local teams, as I have pointed out.

The other problem with the massive financial driver behind this, as has been made clear to me in recent meetings, is that the Met police are now keen to sell to the highest bidder as fast as possible. That brings me on to another point about the future of these police stations. If a decision is taken that they must be closed, which the community does not want, given that we have an affordable and social housing crisis in this country—particularly somewhere such as south-west London where there are so few sites—why is there pressure to sell to the highest bidder, which ultimately means it just goes to luxury developers, who often cannot meet planning requirements, so buildings lie redundant? If we are forced to give up Teddington police station, I would be keen to see it go back to community use, primarily for affordable and social housing, because that is the biggest issue I see in my constituency.

I look forward to hearing from the policing Minister about the future of not only Teddington police station, but police stations across London, whether they can be saved and whether he will support my campaign to ensure that, if they must be sold off, they are kept for community use and for affordable and social housing.