Cardiff's new Custody Suite

A new police station has been built in Cardiff just a good stone's throw from the Welsh assembly building. It comprises a state-of-the-art custody suite that has been built on two floors and a large police station has been built above it.
It was designed and built to serve the basic command unit of the Eastern Division of South Wales Police. The Custody Centre covers the whole of Cardiff and parts of the Vale of Glamorgan Central Division.

Mark Phillips the Estates Manager who since 1986 has had special responsibility for capital projects, invited Custodial Review to Cardiff. He is responsible for all major South Wales Police new build projects and major refurbishment projects.

What custody facilities were there available to this basic command unit prior to the new facility being completed? And what were the major operational reasons for the changes?

Mark Phillips There were two major reasons why we built this new facility. Originally we had several police stations spread across the Cardiff area; these included Cardiff's main police station at Cathays Park. However the building was in a terrible condition and had a very limited cell capacity. The second major reason was a more operational one. We decided it was more efficient to rationalise our custody facilities by closing a number of units and centralising them here.

What is the capacity of this new facility and how long ago did the decision-making process start?

Mark Phillips  We have 60 cells and it was between 7 to 10 years ago when the need for a new facility was first identified. The concept was refined and about five years ago the decision was taken to commence the build phase. Construction took approximately two and a half years; the design process took about a year, and prior to that, we were examining the user requirements for the facility.

What facilities are available on this site besides the 60 cells?

Mark Phillips  From the bottom to the top, it consists of semi basement parking, a two-storey custody suite, half the first floor and the next two floors are basically open plan offices capable of being used for police administrative functions.

What else did the opening of this facility make redundant

Paul Chapple, the Head of custody for South Wales joined the conversation...

Paul Chapple  We had the old divisional headquarters in Cardiff Central Police Station. It was a very small central complex with only six cells. In addition to the east of the force we had Rumney Police Station, which had 13 cells and to the west of the city we had another cell complex called Fairwater, which also had 13 cells.
All of these suites of cells were over 30 years old and they looked it.
This limited capacity gave us problems, and on big match days, football or rugby or over the Christmas period, we had to open additional cell capacity. One of these would have been Roath Police Station, which is famous from the Torchwood television series however, those cells and the station are over 100 years old. It could best be described as quaint, but no way could it be said to comply with the safer custody regulations.
The conditions for the detainees and staff were less than ideal and three years ago the NPIA determined that our custody facilities had to be upgraded to comply with Safer Detention. It was then a straightforward choice between upgrading the existing suites or building this new facility. The financial and operational arguments made this the obvious choice. We have now closed all the old custody units and this one large unit now fulfils all our custody requirements.

To ask an obvious question - if you actually need 60 cells and beforehand you only had 30, what did you do before when you reached the limited capacity?

Paul Chapple  Quite simply we had to take prisoners further a-field to places like Merthyr Tydfil. When Cardiff was full we took prisoners to Barry and the next choice was to take them north into the Rhondda Valley. This was highly inefficient at the time and when we had the greatest demand, we had to send people off in cars with two policemen! The inefficiency really impacted upon our force operational capabilities.

So five weeks ago this new facility opened. How did you manage the transition from using four custody units to using one?

Paul Chapple  A year before we took possession of the building. Mark and his colleagues started planning to ensure a smooth transition. We formed a commissioning team made up of policemen, G4S custody staff and other interested parties. We planned a timeline of how we would shut the outlying suites that was accurate to the day.

Mark Walters joins the conversation...

He was the Regional Custody Inspector in the west of the force. He is a recently retired police officer. He joined the project two years ago with a brief to concentrate on the custody angle of the build.
Mark Walters We commissioned the new custody suite in several phases: the first phase involved two of the old existing custody units being closed and we commenced using 24 of the new cells on the ground floor in the new building. Two weeks later we decommissioned the last two custody suites and bought the rest of the 36 cells here into use. This enabled us to ensure that all the custody procedures, booking and staffing procedures, were all up and working properly before the unit went fully operational.

What has been the effect of a centralised custody suite on your staffing requirements? Did you relocate everyone to this building, make any people redundant or take on new staff?

Mark Walters  The number of custody sergeants that we already had to serve this area was not deemed sufficient to operate the new facility effectively. The Criminal Justice Department submitted a business case to increase the number of sergeants to ensure the safe running of the complex. The business case was presented and we were allocated the necessary resources.

This might seem surprising because centralisation usually results in lower staff numbers being required.
That seems incredible! How can it take more staff to run a 60 cell complex than it did to run four separate smaller units- albeit with only half the cells?

Paul Chapple  We need five custody sergeants, ten custody staff and one Custody Inspector per shift. You have to remember that this 60-cell unit is subdivided into two floors. The buildings footprint limited our manning programme. Normally you would have built a custody unit on a single floor with cells radiating out from the custody desk. However, the shape of the building plot here precluded that. So we run the first floor as a self-contained 26-cell custody suite and the downstairs is a self-contained 34-cell custody suite.

So the piece of land this building is on determined the way the custody suites were staffed? Would it not have been better, considering the high cost of staff to have built the station and custody suite on a different site with more space?

Paul Chapple  Not really. Even if we had been able to build the custody suite on one floor you would not have had one custody sergeant managing the whole 60 cell complex, as this would not fall within the safer detention guidelines. You would still have needed to split responsibility and so staffing would have been broadly similar. Here, we have one custody sergeant for each group of 13 cells, which we feel, is more practical and safer.

On a practical level, how do the custody staff work?

Paul Chapple  We have 2 G4S custody staff per bank of 13 cells, they do all the functions required within the custody suite from booking in, to searching, identity checking, shoe impressions and fingerprinting. In fact, all the functions that would normally have to be performed by policemen, with the exception of breath testing. This has released a lot of time to the police officers and they can return to frontline duties far more quickly. And because the custody staff are doing these functions constantly, a higher quality of result is achieved in less time. So even though we have more staff than before, there is more work being done and this is releasing more officers back to their frontline duties.

Mark, after the building had been designed, where there any changes made during the construction phase?

Mark Phillips  There were no major changes to the design or concept of the building during construction, however, there were minor changes to some of the details. This was due in some part to events elsewhere and also to requirements that changed subsequent to the building plans being agreed. For instance, an incident occurred in another force where  prisoners barricaded themselves into their cell. It took the fire service two hours to open the door, which they destroyed in the process.
To prevent a similar occurrence here, we changed the specification so that by removing a door keep plate, the Cell Security doors can be opened externally, quickly and no damage is caused. We also replaced the cell cameras with ones that give a wider field of view.

I noticed that you have natural light within all the cells and this is supplied by Solatubes light tubes running down inside the atrium then through the wall and into the top of each cell. Some of the distances that light has to travel are quite incredible what was it that determined this solution?

Mark Phillips The plot of land! The building footprint prevented natural light getting into this number of cells through conventional windows. The only solution to get natural light into the cells was through solar tubes or sun pipes.
During the build process we discovered we would need additional solar tubes and the need for highly efficient ones was also identified. This situation was made more challenging by the distance the tube has to carry the light. It’s well over 20 meters. At this moment in time there is no specific standard for the lux level or designated amount of lighting a solar tube must provide to a cell. The Home Office design guide states are that the inmate must be able to tell the difference between night and day. We worked to ensure that we exceeded this guideline and are now working with the Home Office to refine and establish a set of standards for the provision of light via solar tubes into cells.

Why did you feel you needed to go beyond the basic Home Office guidelines?

Mark Phillips The requirement that says the inmate must be able to tell the difference between day and night wouldn't necessarily provide sufficient light to meet their human rights. It would be possible to meet the Home Office guidelines by just providing a dim glow! It seemed common sense from the very outset to install the very best solar tubes we could find and give the best natural illumination we could.   

Now that this station has been open for several weeks, what has been the effect on the police in Cardiff? For instance, on their working conditions and their attitude and morale?

Paul Chapple From the custody staff's perspective they have come from a poor standard single Sergeant custody suites, where even getting a meal break was difficult. Here, a colleague can easily take over duties for a short while. All the equipment is here to help them. For instance, cell call equipment enables them to do their job efficiently and correctly, everything is new and morale has improved considerably. All of this is due to a better working environment and better working conditions. The economies of scale also worked to our advantage. For instance, we have considerably more booking-in points and more staff on duty at any one time, so processing of detainees is much quicker and less stressful. All this improves the working conditions for staff and the conditions for the detainees. The days when you could have two or three vans outside a station waiting to discharge people into the custody suite have gone. We now have six holding cells and two high-capacity van docks.
One thing that we missed was orientating the policemen who were visiting the custody suite for the first time. We should have arranged for groups of policemen to visit the suite in order to orientate themselves and find out what the new standard operating procedures were here.

Mark, looking back what would you have done differently?

Mark Phillips In an ideal world, with ideal conditions, and an ideal money supply, I would have preferred to have built the custody suite on one floor and used the handprint style of layout. That is the one with the cell corridors radiating out from the custody desk. This would have given good lines of sight and would have probably been more efficient from a management point of view.
One floor with a large roof space above would also have made it much easier when it comes to services, heating and ventilation, electrics etc., and obviously the provision of natural light however, you have to work within the constraints of what you're provided with. However, I feel that we've done extremely well with what we have.

Paul Chapple  I echo all of what Mark says, but I would have gone one stage further and looked for a brown field site with more room, a lot more parking and I would have built a stand-alone custody suite on it. This site simply  fits the profile of an ideal custody suite, and we have a lot of visitors here other than the police. We have solicitors, deliverers and administration staff.
What we have here is an excellent example of how you can work a custody suite over two floors. However, it does need more staff, which over the period of the life of the building will probably make it more expensive.

What about you Mark?

Mark Walters I would like to have been involved in the project from an earlier date. I came into it 18 months before it went operational and I believe that if the same people had been involved all the way through, this would have resulted in less issues having to be resolved during the build and commissioning phase. However, I recognise that a police officer being the liaison over the whole five-year development and build process would have been very difficult to achieve.
The Police Station is a superb building from the inside and outside. The atrium area has been utilised as a breakout area. It has balconies upon which meetings can be held. It’s well equipped and bright. However, I had a problem parking in the local area. I’m told that prior to the station being built the parking on the local streets was permit free. Soon after the station became operational, local pressure on the council resulted in many residential streets becoming permit only. Perhaps Paul Chappell is right and a stand-alone custody suite on a larger brown field site would have been better. That said, it’s a superb facility.

Thank you gentlemen for taking the time to speak with the Review.