Tony Maggs Hampshire Isle of Wight Police Custody Design Guide 2019 Launch

The Ministry of Justice is drawing up a new design guide for police custody centres, the Blue Light Estates Development Conference has heard.

Tony Maggs, Projects Lead for the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Police & Crime Commissioners Office, told the delegates that the guide is due to be issued in the spring or summer of 2019. A draft of the new guide will be issued for reviews by Christmas following a series of workshops involving architects, academics and practitioners.

The new guide, which will replace an existing document that has never gone beyond draft stage, would draw on a growing body of academic research about police custody centres and their design. These studies have looked at how issues like privacy, access to natural light, use of colour and even artworks can help to promote the well-being of staff and detainees.

Maggs said that small design changes can have a ‘huge impact’, giving as an example how Hampshire’s new custody centres have installed vented footwear lockers outside cells: “It takes the nasty miffs up and out and makes a real improvement when you walk into a place and it smells fresh and pleasant. The police have stopped doing a lot of things in austerity and has had to become very flexible, really, really difficult but we have to keep people safer. We’re not going to stop arresting people so we must get these facilities right and deliver them to a high standard.”
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He told the conference that a number of police forces across England and Wales are currently looking at redeveloping their customer centres. These include Cambridgeshire whose PCC has recently visited Hampshire’s new custody centre in Basingstoke. In addition, others are looking to develop new custody centres including:

·         Nottinghamshire

·         West Mercia

·         Merseyside

·         City of London

·         Gwent

·         Dyfyd-Powys

Maggs own force is also opening another custody centre in Portsmouth – due to open in spring 2019. He also confirmed that the NPEG, which can call on a team of 20-30 estates professionals, has taken over the role of informal sign-off projects from the Home Office.

Judy Gavan, Building the Future Programme Manager at Surrey Police, said the South East force is planning a new HQ. The 12,500 sq m new hub will replace five current sites in the centre and east of the county, including a former manor house in Guildford that houses the force’s existing headquarters, resulting in a 57% reduction in floorspace.

Gavan admitted that while the new building would cost £30-35m to build, estimated running cost savings of £1.9m per annum on areas like backlog maintenance would enable the project to payback within 15 to 20 years, and the site would need to have good connectivity and access to the motorway network.

As part of the HQ redevelopment the service will be accelerating its agile working plans: “It won’t suit some, but we want to push it as far as we can.”

She said the force would retain and refurbish its other two existing strategic office hubs in north and west Surrey. They have however sold a total of 22 police stations, mostly for residential development, which has reduced its total floorspace by 30% and saved £1.3 per annum in running costs.

Andrew Pollard, Managing Director of the estates collaboration vehicle set up by Hereford & Worcester Fire & Rescue together with the West Mercia and Warwickshire Police forces, spoke about their estates rationalisation.

The three forces had reduced their operating costs from £46m per annum to £32m as well as raising £14m worth of capital receipts. He hopes other emergency services will join the partnership.
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