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Could West Hampstead police station close?

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West Hampstead police station looks certain to lose its front counter, but the murmurings that the whole station is under threat are getting louder.

The Metropolitan Police has engaged in a strange consultation process regarding front counter closures. It can, at best, be described as cursory. A cynic might even interpret it as underhand. “Priority stakeholders” were the only people due to be consulted. Andrew Dismore, the London Assembly Member for Barnet & Camden, is one of these people but, for some reason, it took the borough police a week to find his e-mail address to inform him of the consultation. By that time there were only four days left for him to respond. Even if he had received it in time, it still seems a staggeringly short period of consultation. And why was it so hard for the police to find the e-mail address of an elected representative? (Here’s a hint for them next time).

Andrew Dismore

We all know that public services are being cut back far and wide, and the Met is certainly not exempt. The consultation document (which is a strange two-pager that’s heavy on rationale but light on solutions) explains that the force’s budget need to drop by an eye-watering half a billion pounds by 2015. That isn’t just a lot of money, it’s also a huge chunk of 2011/12’s £2.7 billion budget.

There are 136 police front counters across London, although the consultation paper says that more than a quarter have less than one visitor per hour. Fewer than 50 crimes a night are reported at front counters between 11pm and 7am, and 23 of the 24-hour stations see less than one crime reported every three nights. “They are now primarily staffed by police officers, simply waiting for the public to come to them,” says the paper.

The Met is keen to point out that “This is not about reducing our service but expanding, adapting and changing it for a more modern approach.” I do wonder why it’s not possible for those police officers drumming their fingers on the front desk to perhaps be doing something else while they wait, and maybe someone has to ring a doorbell to be let in, so there’s a drop-in service, but the desk doesn’t have to actually be manned permanently. Surely multi-tasking is possible. (I don’t believe for a minute that police officers aren’t already doing something while they sit and wait).

At Mayor’s Question Time this week, Boris came under sustained fire from Assembly Members, notably Labour’s Dismore and the Lib Dems’ Caroline Pidgeon, who said that 1 in 4 rapes were reported at front counters and was it really reasonable to expect people to report these and other serious crimes in coffee shops. For the consensus is that this is Boris’s big idea: relocate police counters to more accessible locations such as shopping centres. This good ITV news report even moots our very own O2 centre as a possible location as well as showing the Mayor’s response to the questions – he accuses Dismore of “fetishising bricks and mortar”, and says that coffee shops are indeed one avenue that might be pursued.

The grand plan foresees the number of locations where the public can contact the police in person rise from 136 today to up to 270 locations in 2015. In total, 65 front counters will be replaced by more than 200 “Contact Points”, of which seven will be in Camden.

Hampstead police station has already been slated for closure and despite a vocal campaign up in NW3 it’s hard to see that it will be reprieved. Although the consultation document doesn’t expressly mention West Hampstead (in fact the only station named is Holborn which will be the borough’s only 24/7 station), Camden police told Dismore directly:

“The proposals under consultation for Camden are for Holborn front counter to remain open 24 hours and for Kentish Town to be open 40 hour per week. Albany Street, Hampstead and West Hampstead front counters will close and we are looking to create 7 Contact Points across the borough to provide alternative access to policing services.”

That seems pretty clear. It would make our nearest public access station Kentish Town, which is hardly convenient. What is still not clear is whether the whole of West Hampstead police station would close, including the 999 response units. As we all know, West Hampstead also has stables for the mounted police, although this division sits outside the borough structure. According to a letter from Camden’s conservative leader Andrew Mennear in the CNJ back in October, the mounted police would stay while the rest of the police station would close and West Hampstead’s police force would be off to Kentish Town. Even the latest draft of the Neighbourhood Development Plan mentions the police station site as a possible development space.

I’m led to understand by Andrew Dismore’s office that the (seemingly blindingly obvious) idea of turning the small Safer Neighbourhood Team base by the tube station into a front counter is not being considered. So where will locals be able to report crime (or hand in lost property)? The O2 shopping centre strikes me as the most obvious place. The SNT already runs stalls there from time to time, and there is designated community space upstairs. It’s hard to think of anywhere on West End Lane unless there could be co-sharing with the library, or with whatever comes to pass at 156 West End Lane (aka the Travis Perkins building). Mill Lane has more vacant spaces, but none of these solutions are to house a response team. Still, we all know that there’s never any traffic between here and Kentish Tow… oh, yes. Right.

Making savings of £500m is always going to lead to some difficult decisions, but efficiency and cost-effectiveness are surely only part of the equation when it comes to providing emergency service cover. In the meantime, Dismore’s changed his Twitter avatar to one that reads 999SOS – a Labour initiative in City Hall and across London to coordinate objections to the scale and speed of cuts to the police and fire services.

How would you feel about the demise of the front counter at West Hampstead? How about the loss of the whole police station?

Boris in, Brian out

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The votes from both Barnet & Camden and Brent & Harrow constituencies were counted at Alexandra Palace on Friday. Sadly it seemed no-one mentioned that to the construction crews working on the historic building. The result was a power cut early in the day, which held up counting. Then, at the end of the day, a couple of ballot boxes from Brent turned up containing damaged papers and these had to be counted by hand. It was already clear by this stage that incumbent mayor Boris Johnson was going to beat Ken Livingstone, but Brent is die-hard Ken country, so there was always that slimmest of slim chances. After all, at the Hampstead & Kilburn vote in 2010, it was boxes arriving from Brent that gave Glenda the late and very very narrow victory.

In the end, although Ken got 6,500 more second preference votes than Boris in Brent & Harrow, BoJo’s overall winning margin across London was fairly comfortable.

We don’t have the ward breakdown yet for Barnet and Camden, so I can’t tell you how West Hampstead’s vote compared to that in 2008, but across the two borough here are the results

A couple of notable stats: Barnet & Camden gave more 2nd preference votes to the Green Party’s Jenny Jones than to any other candidate, and voters here also gave Boris less than 400 more second preferences than independent Siobhan Benita. Nevertheless, Boris was more popular in Barnet & Camden than he was across London as a whole. So, a good night for the Conservatives? Not entirely.

As was widely reported, Barnet & Camden’s London Assembly vote was between Conservative Brian Coleman and Labour’s Andrew Dismore. There was a strong campaign to oust Coleman, and indeed his sizeable majority was completely reversed as Labour saw a 14 percentage point swing in their favour as Coleman’s vote fell away.

The CNJ’s Richard Osley was at Alexandra Palace but neither he nor any other journalist could get an interview with Coleman, who arrived for the count but vanished before giving a speech.

Farewell Brian.

Barnet and Camden: the end of the road for Brian Coleman?

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As well as electing the next Mayor of London this Thursday, we also get to vote for who represents us on the London Assembly. There are 14 constituency Assembly Members and 11 London-wide members elected based on proportional representation.

In West Hampstead, our constituency is Barnet and Camden, and that means we have to choose between incumbent Brian Coleman (Con), Andrew Dismore (Lab), Chris Richards (LD), Audrey Poppy (Green – with a name like that, had to be), and Michael Corby (UKIP – or “Fresh Choice for London” as they’ve somehow managed to get themselves billed in the official London Elects brochure).

Do we care about who speaks for us at City Hall? Assembly members don’t have a great deal of power, you can read the official line as to the role of the Assembly. The thrust of it is to hold the mayor to account, campaign on various issues, and potentially get involved in large-scale planning issues. One might argue it’s not that important, although one could imagine that if the Assembly was dominated by the same party as the Mayor’s, then there might be a little less scrutiny.

As for the candidates, well, it’s fair to say that Brian Coleman is a controversial figure. I’m not going to list the litany of criticisms that he’s faced – the very fact that there’s a website called “101 Reasons to Sack Brian Coleman“, gives you an indication of his unpopularity in certain circles. From racking up extortionate taxi bills at the taxpayers’ expense, to dismissing perfectly legitimate questions out of hand, this is one elected official who doesn’t kow tow to his voters.

Coleman (left) aiming lower than erstwhile H&K candidate Chris Philp

He’s spotted in West Hampstead from time to time, chatting up small business owners or generally waving the blue flag around election time, but he’s really a Barnet politician (and erstwhile Mayor of the borough). He famously dislikes bloggers. During the general election one Tory aide asked me in front of him whether I’d like to interview him. We answered in unison; him with a pithy “I don’t do bloggers”, and me with a marginally more polite “No thanks, he’s not that interesting to our readers at the moment”.

He objected to both the 187-199 West End Lane development and the Abbey Area development proposals before they went to City Hall but clearly his objections carried little weight as both were passed without amendment. I asked (at very short notice) two of Camden’s Conservative councillors to tweet me a reason to vote for Coleman. Gio Spinella’s reply: “[he has] a proven track-record of sound and firm management with London’s Fire Brigades and one undeniable virtue: with Brian Coleman you will always know where you stand. He won’t equivocate or pander.” Which is probably about as diplomatic as you can get.

Coleman has been in trouble with Barnet council three times this year already. “The council’s standards committee upheld complaints from two members of the public that he had been disrespectful in a series of email exchanges, including one in which he said a lobbyist would have been a member of the fascist Blackshirts 70 years ago,” reported the Barnet & Whetstone Times. Then on April 4th, he is alleged to have called a resident a “twat” and told them to “clear off” during a cabinet meeting open to the public. This wasn’t in response to some abuse, it was in response to a question on the closure of Friern Barnet Library.

I try quite hard to be non-partisan on this blog, but I find it very hard to endorse any politician who appears to have such disdain for his constituents. Or as respected London political commentator Dave Hill puts it, “Coleman personifies vividly a comedic suburban affrontedness rarely found outside of television sitcoms. The spectacle of someone completely in the grip of his own, inexhaustible indignation provides an unexpected intellectual satisfaction.”

Andrew Dismore is a former MP (for Hendon, 1997 to 2010). He’s thought to have a real chance of beating Coleman, especially if Labour’s support in Camden holds up and enough Tory voters decide that they’d rather elect someone who didn’t call the fire brigade union members “thick” (one of Coleman’s three public jobs is as Chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority).

Dismore’s experience in Westminster puts him in good stead for the Assembly. While an MP, he chaired the London group of Labour MPs, and was a strong advocate for decent affordable homes – a critical requirement for London both now and in the future.

It’s true that Dismore had his spending come under scrutiny during the MP expenses scandal although he was subsequently cleared by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Nevertheless, he is almost certainly the only credible competitor to Coleman, and he certainly talks the talk:

“My reputation as a councillor and as an MP was of someone who worked hard for his constituents, and I will do the same as your assembly member. I will be visible, active and engaged. I will not be like the present Conservative incumbent AM, who in the three years since he was last elected, has not written once to the police to raise Safer Neighbourhood Team staffing and deployment issues, nor to Transport for London to raise the Northern Line upgrade, the strategic bus network, or cycling issues, nor to senior Camden council officers about anything at all.”

What of the other candidates? Lib Dem Chris Richards may be Bromley-born, but he’s a Camden boy now, so those of us in the southern reaches of the enormous Barnet & Camden constituency might feel he has more to offer although he lacks the political experience and gravitas of Coleman or Dismore. I can’t find anything about the Greens’ Audrey Poppy except that she came 4th in the 2005 general election in Chipping Barnet. UKIP’s Michael Corby wanted to be the party’s mayoral candidate, and he sets out his stall in this video. The Barnet Eye has an interesting take on the role UKIP could have played in this election: given Coleman’s unpopularity with some voters, UKIP might have expected to pick up votes here, which would have helped them secure seats in the Assembly based on the proportional representation formula. However, Corby has been the “invisible man” in this election.

Coleman does appear, for the first time, to be running scared. Last Friday he apparently went round local shops in High Barnet that had put up anti-Coleman posters and bullied shopkeepers into removing them. One shopowner said, ““He was going mad and shouting. He was right in my face and wouldn’t leave when I asked him. He was intimidating.”

When you go to vote for the mayor on Thursday, don’t automatically tick the London Assembly box that corresponds to your general party affiliation. Have a think about the role of Assembly Members, which is more consultative than executive, and about the type of person you believe should represent you.