Hampstead has launched a campaign to:

(a)       maintain policing in the north of the borough and to keep a reasonable police presence in Hampstead;
(b)       maintain a police station in Hampstead;
(c)       keep the police stables in West Hampstead.
 
Police presence
 
Concerns have been raised by rumours indicating that the Metropolitan Police is seeking to sell-off 40 police buildings across London.  These concerns are magnified locally as Labour-controlled Camden Council had previously identified Kentish Town as the location for a central police base in its Local Development Framework plan for the borough.  When challenged, Labour councillors have refused to give calculations of the likely response time for the police to respond to 999 calls in Hampstead and West Hampstead if teams are patrolling from Kentish Town. 
 
Conservatives have fought for many years to maintain a police station in Hampstead and are not giving up yet.
 
Hampstead police station
 
Ever since the move to borough-based policing under Tony Blair in the late 1990s and the subsequent increase in paperwork he inflicted on the police, response times to 999 calls in Hampstead have suffered.  The station has been under threat several times in recent years, and it is feared that the Met is once again considering plans to sell it off.  The police must provide us with assurances about their response times to incidents in Hampstead if they propose changes to policing here.  In addition to keeping a police station in Hampstead, we want to preserve the current iconic building.   The building is in bad need of refurbishment and languishes as decisions wait to be taken about its future.  We must preserve it for future generations who, like us, will look to it as a beacon in our community.
 
Police stables in West Hampstead
 
Just three years ago, Chris Philp secured thousands of signatures on a petition to back a Conservative campaign to keep the then-threatened police stables in West Hampstead.  We need to underline the point once more that we need the police horses to stay.  The police horses provide residents with much more security, and this location is far more convenient for Central London than Wembley.
 
 Residents need assurances that Labour Camden knows what is at stake, and Hampstead Conservatives will be putting down questions and a motion to demand answers at the next  Full Council meeting.
 
We, therefore, call on the Met to:

(a)       Maintain policing in the north of the borough and to keep a reasonable police presence in Hampstead;
(b)       Maintain a police station in Hampstead;
(c)       Keep the police stables in West Hampstead.
 
Please sign and comment in our petition on these issues which will later be hand delivered to London's Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Stephen Greenhalgh.

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