Building the Temporary Custody Suite at Newbury

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Building the Temporary Custody Suite at Newbury

The story so far: Six prefabricated, fully furnished, modules arrived at Newbury Police Station on low loaders early on Saturday morning. Each in turn was hoisted by crane over a two story building and placed precisely onto pre-positioned piers. The work started at 8am and was complete be 2.30pm. Progress resumed almost immediately by joining-up and making-good the gaps in the floor, walls and ceiling. Finally, the whole thing was sealed and weatherproofed and the workers went home in time for tea. Our Editor talks to Mr Glen Ashby, the Project Manager for the new custody suite for Thames Valley Police at Newbury.

We spoke last in the custody suite at High Wycombe a few days ago, where you said that you were the Senior Liaison Officer for the re-building and/or refurbishment of a succession of custody suites for the Thames Valley Police, and this is one of them at Newbury. I understand that there have been some anxious moments, how do you feel about it now?

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Glen Ashby (GA) As you know the six modules (8 cells and processing area) that have been positioned on the car park here are a temporary solution to the custody problem, while a permanent structure is being built. You will notice there is not much room to spare. In fact, I would say that they have been ‘shoehorned’ into position. At one end, there is just 4 inches to spare and not much more anywhere else. To move a building that size with precision, took an extreme amount of skill, care and planning. The result is that we now have an operational custody suite to use while building is in progress on the permanent structure. It doesn’t give us all the room we would like and we had to use the space imaginatively to accommodate all the functions, but it works quite well as you can see.

I guess it wasn’t a very windy day when the modules were lifted over and carefully placed. Any more anxious times?
GA The space we have isn’t ideal, we have had to rationalise the front end ancillary area accommodation and although we have two PACE interview rooms. And a documentation area that is small, but it works well. The booking in area is also tight for space- but again it does the job. The Intoximeter room is also tight for space but adequate for the requirements.

Have there been any operational problems?
GA Not really. All the services you would expect in a custody unit are present; we are able to operate a full custody suite service for us and the magistrates court and it’s a much better solution than moving people all around the Division.

Glen, I’m glad it went well for you, thank you for speaking to the Review.

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