Police invite Keynsham residents to attend a public consultation

Local residents and businesses in Keynsham are being invited to attend a public consultation day to find out more about proposals for a new police custody and crime investigation centre to be located at Ashmead Road, Keynsham.

As revealed at the recent Keynsham East PACT meeting this week, it will house 45 cells and enable officers to process detainees faster and return to policing the streets more quickly and will provide flexible and compliant facilities to serve Bath and parts of Bristol for the next 30 years.

A public drop-in session is being held on Thursday 29th July from 3 – 7 pm at the Drill Hall, Bristol TA Centre, Ashmead Road, Keynsham, Bristol BS31 1SX. This will include a ‘meet the team’ session from 5-7pm.

The custody and crime investigation centre is part of a much wider accommodation programme; ‘Building for the Future’ which will use mainly government funding (PFI – Private Finance Initiative) to transform the police’s way of working and provide better access for local communities now and well into the future.

The Accommodation Programme and associated PFI funding were approved earlier this year by the Home Office and have since been reviewed and confirmed by the new government. If all goes to plan, it is anticipated that the buildings will open from 2014 and public consultation will take place at many stages between now and then.

Assistant Chief Constable Rod Hansen said: “We want local communities to feel safe and be safe. Our plans to improve our custody process and provide centrally located custody centres will enable us to return our officers to the streets faster and to bring more offenders to justice.

“This is the first stage of the process which will support our outline planning application to Bath and North East Somerset Council. We will consult regularly with local communities and interest groups throughout the process.”

Dr Peter Heffer, Chair of Avon and Somerset Police Authority said: “This project will transform the police estate to meet the challenges of modern-day policing and allow us to serve the local community even better. We know that the public prioritises police visibility and one way we can achieve this is to centralise our custody centres, make processes simpler and return officers to the streets quicker.

“The custody and crime investigation centre at Ashmead Road, is just one of the projects in the Accommodation Programme to provide staff with sustainable buildings in optimum locations with increased custody facilities, so we can improve policing for the communities of Avon and Somerset.”