WHAT goes around comes around and, in this instance, it’s local police control rooms.
There was uproar when the control room at Huddersfield police station was closed down in the mid 1990s and all the staff moved to Bradford.
The powerful arguments against the move at the time included the loss of local knowledge and accountability with the fear that the staff in the forcewide control rooms would not know the Huddersfield area in enough detail.
The Huddersfield staff were later switched from Bradford to Wakefield – but in a big U-turn there will be a dedicated control room for Kirklees within Kirklees by September.
And what reasons are now given?
Well, exactly the same ones that were made in the vain bid to stop them closing all those years ago.
Chief Insp Mick Hanks said “this is all about local accountability’’ and that the public is telling them “they want to know their call will be dealt with by someone who knows and works in their patch and understands their local issues.’’
So why were all these arguments ignored back in the 1990s?
Perhaps a clue is in something else Chief Insp Hanks had to say – that it will lead to “efficiency savings.’’
If that’s so then it’s a win-win scenario unless, of course, you take into account all the unnecessary expense of shutting down the local control rooms in the past.
