Andrew Snowden is the Police and Crime Commissioner for Lancashire.
When I stood for election in 2021 to oust the failing and invisible Labour Police and Crime Commissioner, I made a number of promises to the people of Lancashire. One of those was that every area of Lancashire, not just Labour voting areas, deserved the fundamental basics of policing; an operational Police Station open to the public and a dedicated local neighbourhood policing team.
Since being elected I have delivered on this promise and every district of Lancashire now has an open police station and a dedicated neighbourhood policing team. But as reported in the press this week, secret Labour plans in Lancashire put all this at risk.
I am incredibly proud to have re-opened Clitheroe, Kirkham, Waterfoot and Leyland Police Stations to the public and there are two new police stations currently entering the construction phase. This is all on top of the £2 million for anti-social behaviour hotspot patrols, the £700,000 expansion of the rural policing teams, the creation of a new Roads Policing Unit, and many other investments that have significantly increased the police presence across Lancashire.
But concern for the future of police front counters across Lancashire has been expressed from many residents after Labour surprisingly selected my Labour predecessor, who closed the stations to the public and cut neighbourhood teams across the county, as their ‘comeback candidate’ for Police and Crime Commissioner in 2024.
As first reported in the Lancashire Telegraph, when I took up Office in 2021 I was presented with a secret list of planned savings that included closing the front counters at Accrington, Burnley, Chorley, Colne, Fleetwood, Morecambe, Lancaster, and Skelmersdale Police Stations and making scores of police staff redundant.
This plan was part of the ‘business planning’ that underpinned the budget the Labour’s PCC had set, but had requested that final approval for the closures be put off until after the elections. These plans were bad enough, but the deceit to hide them from the electorate knowing what horrors he had planned was even worse. I immediately shelved these closure plans, which would have been yet another backward step from community-based policing in Lancashire.
I will never forget how appalled I felt on my first day in the job to find out these secret plans existed and had not been revealed, debated or discussed at the elections we had just had – to put it into context, this list of closures would have left just three police stations open to the public across the whole of Lancashire – which has a population of nearly 1.5million.
I am really pleased that these plans, the efforts I have gone to reverse them, and the extra stations I have re-opened have been reported in the press. It’s important the public know the truth about not only the plans, but the deception of not revealing them as part of the budget or during the elections when we were all setting out our policies.
A little bit like when the Conservatives won the 2010 general election and found a note from Labour saying ‘There’s no money left’, I entered Office finding a plan from Labour that meant ‘the budget only balances if you close all these stations to the public’.
It took a lot of hard work to unpick the budget implications of the plans and especially whilst also re-opening others. The police should be at the heart of the communities they serve and every council area of Lancashire deserves at least one police station open to the public and a dedicated neighbourhood policing team, backed up by all the extra crime-fighting capabilities I have been bringing in – which you can read more about here.
So, if you live in Lancashire and are reading this article – I need you to help us save our stations.
Only by re-electing me, having delivered on my promises to you, can we save our stations. So please make sure you cast your vote in the PCC elections on May 2nd and vote Conservative.
The post Andrew Snowden: Labour’s secret Police Station closure plans in Lancashire appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Andrew Snowden
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