Arrest facilities for Oldham police station a must

The campaign for a new police station in Oldham with facilities to lock up prisoners has taken another step forward after the Liberal Democrat group put forward a motion to Council committing it to support the policy.

After the Liberal Democrats uncovered that proposals for a new station contained no plans for a custody suite – and that far from improving the situation, officers were going to be asked to take prisoners even further, to Longsight in Manchester – the group has been leading the campaign to change the approach.

Councillor Sam Al-Hamdani, who is proposing the motion, said: “It is simply not good enough that there will be no facilities in Oldham. Having already lost two custody suites in the area, it is staggering that Labour’s police and crime commissioner is talking about replacing the current dog-eared station, and not bringing in the facilities that we need.

“Oldham, sadly, has an extremely high crime rate, and it makes no sense that they are now going to ask officers to take prisoners even further away, increasing the time that they are off our streets. Ask anyone – we simply do not have enough visible policing, and the Labour party should not be putting forward a proposal which reduces that further.”

While the police and crime commissioner has said that any facility will be future proofed, it has already taken years for discussions to get as far as they have – and a site has still not been identified for a new station. This means that by the time a station has been built, they assess the new arrangements, and then try and find the funding to change things, a custody suite in Oldham would be years if not decades away.

Councillor Alicia Marland, a former police special who is seconding the motion, said: “We want to make sure that police have the support they need to do their job quickly and easily, and do more of what officers desperately want to do: get criminals off the streets. 

“They cannot be spending their time driving criminals around Greater Manchester because we don’t have the facilities we need in Oldham. So let’s knock this on the head now – we need a new police station, and we need cells there so police can arrest criminals easily and quickly.”