Inspector John Purcell joined the Met Police in 1990. He transferred to British Transport Police (BTP) in 1998 to take on a new challenge at the national police force for the railways.
John, an experienced Inspector, works in the London North Area of BTP and his most recent job has been to manage the construction of a brand new custody facility in Brewery Road, Islington, north London.

The facility is being built within an existing commercial building using modular techniques by a company called Britspace. This idea is a new innovation for custody and could be the answer to providing custody units at a lower cost than conventional buildings in an inner city area. The site was full of building materials, dust and contractors when we first visited 6 months ago, which gave us a good look at the structure and what lies behind the walls. This is important because this is a custody suite that has been built within an existing building. We went back to see the unit a few days before it opened and spoke to John again.

CR    the Custodial Review
JP    Inspector John Purcell

CR    When we first spoke 6 months ago you told me that because BTP London North did not have its own custody facility this one would have a considerable impact on the efficiency of the Area. The spending cuts have been said not to impact on front line services and that the savings will have to come from efficiencies such as this suite will bring. Now the unit is built and about to be put in use, what efficiencies are you expecting?
JP    There will be a lot, mainly because of how close the custody unit is to London North Area Headquarters. It’s actually within 100 yards. To answer the more obvious efficiency questions as a Force, BTP spends a huge amount of time travelling to and from police custody units all over London in order to process the people we have arrested. An example of this would be a late shift officer based at Area Headquarters who arrests someone for being D&D. He will have to find a cell as local to the arrest as possible, book the offender in, then go back the following morning to process and release the person. This also involves booking them in and out on our system and on the custody units system as well. This is a constant problem for us and this unit will mean that we only have to process the offender once, and it’s only a two minute walk up the road.
Other efficiencies will be the cost of fuel, communications, paper, and time! At present a BTP officer may have to go to 6 custody suites on a busy Friday night to find space for their arrest! Its not that the local Police stations are being difficult, it’s just that they have the same busy nights we do. Having our own custody facility will release officers to go back onto the front line. I’m not sure this is appropriate as I’m sure everyone wants to see officers get back to the front line and not just politicians.
However this is not just a money saving operation, there will be an improvement in the arrest profiles as well. BTP Officers who may have considered issuing a warning or street bailing or some other sanction will now be able to get suspects into the custody suite quickly. Offenders will get know that the BTP have this facility and we are prepared to use it. So there will be an impact on crime too as a result of a positive arrest policy becoming the norm.

CR    Turning to the building itself have you got the facilities you hoped for? Since the planning stage are there facilities you have realised it would have been advantageous to build in but could not?
JP    No, in fact we have more now than we had planned for when the project was designed. For instance we were not originally going to have any ID capture facilities here; however we have built in an ID capture system called Promat. In addition, we have a fingerprint Livescan machine, which we always planned to have. These bring greater efficiencies and enable us to have a longer reach and integrate better into the crime fighting effort. We were able to put these in because the facility was designed with a certain amount of future proofing, both in terms of technology and space. You will have noticed that there is a lot of space not in use next to  the property store. This can be used when requirements dictate and should mean that they will be able to be accommodated without the further high expense of creating a building.

CR    What facilities have you?
JP     We have twenty cells, two exercise yards, search room, holding room and seven interview rooms - six of which are standard PACE sized rooms - and the other one is a larger one which gives more space should an interpreter and/or an appropriate adult need to be present. Should the nationwide roll out of the virtual court system happen, then that room can also be adapted to be used for that purpose. We also have office space where reports can be written. The whole facility is covered by the latest CCTV which stores for 90 days and is fully set up with access control.

CR    The modular system of construction is sometimes portrayed as being as simple as a lorry turns up, a crane lifts the modules into place and once they are connected up the building is complete. However I doubt it’s that simple. How interesting was your first experience of modular building?
JP    Nothing like that at all! The system is lower cost and quicker than on site building in the conventional way and enables factory standards of accuracy. The bottom line is that we had a steep learning curve. BTP had never used the modular system before and Britspace had never built a police custody suite before. So there was a lot of learning to do on both sides. Britspace have and are doing a lot of work within the Prison Service. But this is a substantially different type of project. This is a one off design and construction of a new concept and there were some unforeseen issues to overcome. If we were to build another custody suite then most of the issues would be overcome beforehand because both sides know what is involved.

CR    This method of construction, modular units in an existing building, would you use it again?
JP    That’s not something I would be involved in the decision about, however this method has been a good solution for the requirements we had. From the perspective of speed and cost of build it has been ideal. With the lessons that we have learned from this project it would be even better.

CR    On the design and management side what would you have done differently?
JP    If I were to use this system again I would recommend we were more prescriptive regarding exactly what we wanted. So we would have benefitted from a different process when it came to designing in our requirement. It would be advantageous if we had specified exactly what we wanted down to the size of rooms and the layout, not have said that we want a custody suite with 20 cells, PACE rooms and booking in area etc. However it’s a fact of life that you learn from doing something. And despite the problems we now have a custody suite that is exactly what we need to do the job.

CR    How about the equipment you have installed, you have shown me the CCTV, the cell communication systems and the light tubes. Are they all going to deliver the benefits you anticipated?
JP    We won’t really know about the CCTV until it goes live in a couple of days but all the tests we have conducted show that it’s working as we wanted it too. We will be able to create copies of relevant footage upon request. The tests show that it is giving us the coverage, flexibility and quality we need and specified. The light tubes are exactly what we wanted. We have turned off all the lights in the booking in area, that has no windows, and there is easily enough light to see by and it makes a significant difference. It also gives the cells natural light and makes them compliant with Home Office guidelines. They make a huge difference.

CR    Staffing, last time we spoke you said that you were recruiting Detention Officers and that you were going to have them thoroughly trained. What has happened on that front?
JP    We have not employed custody staff before in this number and because we don’t have any large custody facilities we do not have any procedures for them to follow that would be applicable! So we initially wrote a course prospectus of the skills that we considered essential for them to have in order to do the job properly. We worked on the premise that they would not have any of the knowledge and skills that were needed for the task; neither would they have any experience of a law enforcement or custody environment. Most of the training was carried out in house and included training on how to book prisoners in and take care of them. They had to know about PACE. We also gave them an introduction into police talk, the jargon that has grown up within BTP. So we taught them law and lore. They were sent off to do the full Sergeants 2 week custody course with the City of London Police. We also gave them a bespoke course in officer safety training so that they could react properly if they were attacked or needed to do a cell relocation involving a violent detainee. As they would be writing custody reports it may be that the Detention Officers will be required to attend court to give evidence, so we gave a court presentation skills course. Detention Officers have also been taught how to use the photo booth, DNA sampling and the Livescan machine plus the other kit that is standard in custody units. They are probably the best trained custody staff in the country!