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Met plans £90m shooting school to fight terrorism
Justin Davenport, Crime Correspondent6 Mar 2008
Police are planning a £90 million firearms training centre featuring a mock-up airport terminal and London Underground train carriages.
Senior officers have consulted SAS insiders over the plans. They are asking for the facility because of the increased terror threat and tougher health and safety rules.
The move comes five years after the Metropolitan Police opened one of the world's most sophisticated weapons training centre s at Gravesend. Police say there has been a huge increase in the demand for firearms officers since the 9/11 attacks in the United States and the London bombings in 2005.
The Gravesend centre - which featurescomputer-simulated scenes - is now operating at full capacity and police need extra training facilities to deal with the London Olympics and the ongoing terror threat.
Officials say they are also having to put more emphasis on training officers after the Met was found guilty of breaching health and safety rules last year. Scotland Yard is believed to have identified a site for the new facility near Heathrow airport.
Senior officers say details of the plans have yet to be agreed but they are expected to be similar to the Gravesend facility which includes mock-up Tube carriages and highly sophisticated computer training programmes.
In addition, officers would like to see a mock-up airport terminal and other environments to allow simulated training exercises. One source said: "We are looking at recreating the sort of environments that we are operating in at present. Certainly Heathrow is close by and that is a location which would feature in our exercises."
The Met is using MoD land at RAF Uxbridge as an additional training base but the agreement is expected to end next year. It is estimated an extra 40,000 training days will be required every year by 2012. Senior officers hope the facility will be established by 2011.
Specialist police firearms officers routinely practice with the SAS and the two groups have discussed the plans. While the Met remains an unarmed force there are increasing demands for firearms operations.
Officers are often required to mount raids on armed gangsters, while a more specialised cadre is trained to combat the terrorist threat.
In addition, firearms officers in armed response vehicles are called out about 1,000 times a month to a variety of incidents in London. However, shots are fired on average on only a couple of occasions each year.
