“Blame for proposed closures lies with goverment.”
West Midlands Police have announced a plan to close 28 police stations across the region. In and around the Northfield area, Kings Norton, Longbridge, Warstock and Bartley Green are scheduled to close over the next two years. This will leave no police stations directly situated in the Birmingham Northfield constituency.
In response to this announcement, local MP Richard Burden comments, “Although nearby Bournville Lane will continue to be the Police headquarters for the area, these proposals mean that there will be no police stations in Northfield constituency itself by the end of 2017. In the recent debate I held in Parliament on 8 September, I and other Labour MPs warned about the consequences of Governments cuts to Police funding. We are now seeing those warnings become reality. You can read more about the debate here.
“The blame for all this lies not with West Midlands Police, but with the Conservative Government who will have cut £130m from the budget by 2020. West Midlands Police are being put in an impossible position; faced with cutting numbers of Officers or closing offices.
“Faced with that choice, it is not surprising that they have prioritised front line policing above buildings in an effort to keep officers on the street. The trouble is, it’s not likely to end here, as cuts from the Government are set to bite even deeper in the years to come.
“None of the offices scheduled to close in the Northfield area have front office facilities, and all the areas covered will still be served by Bournville Lane Police Station. Even so, there are still big questions to address and that’s why I’ll be making my views known during the consultation period. In the months I’ll also be continuing to press Ministers to change course. After all, it is the cuts they’re imposing that are jeopardising policing in the West Midlands.”