The Metropolitan Police Service is developing new public engagement into their estates, our Blue Light Estates Development Conference has heard.

These community engagements have been accompanied by a “just over a billion-pound programme” of estates regeneration that was conducted by the service between 2013-2017 according to Vince Fihosy, Property Services Director at the Metropolitan Police.  [emaillocker id=”71749″]

High-tech investment has been a major improvement area for police estates in the capital, with Fihosy mentioning that they were adopting “an estates strategy that focuses on technology and the investment in technology.”

He said: “We focused on productivity, and technology was a real big driver for this, which has become more important to the sector through things like body-worn cameras.” 

Fihosy described the adoption of a more community-oriented approach in the development of their estates: “Some of the design principles we have incorporated into our buildings have been that open nature.”

Police estates have struggled with improvements due to delays in getting contractors on site, due to stringent guidelines, according to Sallie Blanks-Nash, Estates Consultant for Avon and Somerset Police: “If you’re going to work on site then going through police vetting can take a prohibitive amount of time. This could be 3-4 months in some cases.”

The service has attempted to reduce delays on works by introducing a process to reduce waits, Blanks-Nash explained: “There is a thing called the national contractors vetting scheme, this is an opportunity for you to put the onus on yourselves.”

This allows contractors to not only get accredited to work on police estates, but also work across the blue light sector without having to constantly wait for approval. 

The redesign of The Met’s most iconic and sometimes eponymous station, New Scotland Yard, has been focused on engaging more with the community, Fihosy said: “Part of the design brief for New Scotland Yard was for it to be accessible, you can walk up to the building and the rotating sign is in an area where lots of people can see it.”

Fihosy described how the Met had attempted to incorporate that into making custody a more tolerable experience, giving the example of the: “We had an initiative to paint some murals in the custody suite, the intention of that was precisely to reduce aggression.

The rationale for this design philosophy was explained by Blanks-Nash: “Increasingly we are becoming aware of the health benefits of good design.”

Designing police stations to be more accommodating, not only reduces the stress of detainees, potentially reducing dangerous incidents, but also that of staff and those seeking help from the police.

This has long term connotations for the mental health of staff members, where hostile architecture is known to be detrimental. Creating a more humane and connected sector can be led fundamentally through good design as Blanks-Nash summarized: “The built environment can and does make a difference to us all.”

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