Halesowen Police Station to be sold off in 2025 after commissioner ignores petition

The Labour PCC, Simon Foster, responded to Dudley Conservatives' campaign to save the station at the Strategic Policing and Crime Board meeting on Tuesday.

The Laurel Lane complex is set to be sold in 2025, ten years after the original decision to sell the land to raise funds after Government cuts to the policing budget.

Mr Foster said: "I am aware of the understandable public interest that relates to police stations, including in Halesowen and Rowley Regis.

"I am also aware of the serious concerns that the people of the West Midlands, and in particular our constituents in Halesowen and Rowley Regis, have in relation to crime, policing and our criminal justice system as a consequence of ill-advised, misconceived and poor decision making on the part of successive central governments over the past decade.

"We have had a government and now a Prime Minister, that does not believe in and is not prepared to invest in local community police stations. That has led to the closure of over 600 police stations across the country, including by the Prime Minister himself, when he was Mayor of London."

A strategy approved in November 2021 outlined the future of policing in the West Midlands, committing to retaining 10 public contact police stations across the eight Neighbourhood Policing Units as well as eight hubs.

Mr Foster added: "Halesowen is not to be disposed of before spring of 2025. In relation to Halesowen, the Neighbourhood Policing Teams will co-locate locally.

"Safeguards have been put in place to ensure that before any building is sold, the local policing presence is guaranteed and social value from the sale has been properly explored too."

Halesowen MP James Morris, Belle Vale Councillor Simon Phipps and Halesowen North campaigner Mitchell Bolton handed in the 600-name petition to Lloyd House earlier this month.

Mr Morris said: "Having campaigned in previous years against the closure of Halesowen Police Station, I was disappointed to see that another PCC has come forward again with plans to close it and relocate resources nearly six miles away.

"Our force is benefitting from nearly £40m in extra funding this year, as well as extra officers through the Government’s major recruitment drive, and I do not believe there is a case to be made for the closure of our station.

In the last 12 years Halesowen lost its magistrates court, fire station, ambulance station and the public front desk of the police station. Similar proposals were also put forward and then withdrawn to close the station entirely five years ago.