Sixty police stations to shut

Scotland Yard is planning to sell off dozens of ageing and Victorian stations and replace them with "front counters" in shops and offices.

Officers will be located in so-called "patrol bases" on industrial estates rather than police stations.

Ageing prisoners' cells will be replaced by purpose-built "custody suites" - buildings which can cater for up to 40 prisoners at a time.

The decision to offload hundreds of buildings, including police garages, offices and warehouses, was made four years ago. Now an Evening Standard survey has found the Met has identified 56 stations it wants to close - and several more whose future is also in doubt.

Almost every London borough has at least one station which could close under the plans - and a few have three or four. The sell-off is opposed by rank-and-file officers who fear it could lead to police losing touch with the public. The Met Police Federation, which represents patrolling officers, says patrol bases would become "police barracks" with officers retreating behind barbed wire security fencing.

Campaigns have already been launched to save some stations such as Hampstead and Greenford, but the scale of the possible sell-off is only now becoming clear with claims that any consultation exercise has been low key or non-existent.

Scotland Yard says the consultation documents detail "options" to close police stations and nothing has been decided yet.

Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, talking to the Standard, said the force had to deal with buildings which were impractical for modern technology.

He added: "Well in excess of 90 per cent of our contact with the public is not at a police station, it is by phone. We have guaranteed that we will always have a 24-hour police station open in every borough in London. Something in excess of 40 per cent of our structures date to before the Second World War. They are extremely expensive to maintain and very far from green.

"We have to recognise that the vast amount of contact is now by phone and increasingly by internet. Every cop who is standing in the police station is not in the street." However, campaigners against the closures say that by centralising policing in "patrol bases" the Met risks distancing itself from the public.

Met Police Federation chairman Peter Smyth said: "The idea of putting police into patrol bases and closing down police stations is against the whole ethos of community policing.

"The public need to have access to police front-counters and the alternative that is being proposed is to position Safer Neighbourhood Teams in shop-type premises. But these teams should be on patrol rather than manning pretend police stations," said Mr Smyth.

"The danger of putting police into patrol bases is that while community support officers will be on patrol, the police will be reacting to incidents and will only be seen when they are confrontational. We will become more like the French riot police. Local police stations help to generate the feeling that police are there to help them.

"These patrol bases are unmarked. The public will not know what they are, as far as the public are concerned they might be factories."

Mr Smyth added: "The police base idea sounds like a police barracks with officers emerging in their vehicles to carry out enforcement then vanishing again behind their barbed wire fencing. We will be in danger of being seen as the heavies confronting the public rather than talking to people in the community."