Commissioner quizzed on plans for £16.8m police firing range in Stafford
Police and Crime Commissioner Ben Adams will make a final decision on Staffordshire Police’s new £16.8 million firing range in ‘the next few weeks’.
Plans for the firearms training centre at the force’s Stafford headquarters were approved last year, but the scheme has yet to be confirmed.
Mr Adams was quizzed on the issue during a meeting of the area police and crime panel.
He said he still believed that Staffordshire’s police officers still needed the new facility, but he wanted to explore the possibility of sharing it with neighbouring forces.
The panel was told that a final decision would be made before the start of the pre-election purdah period in March.
Mr Adams’ proposed four-year capital programme for Staffordshire Police includes £16.8 million for the firing range – up from £14.8 million previously – along with £1.5 million for modernisation work at the Weston Road HQ, a ‘prerequisite of the firing range’.
The two-storey training facility would replace an outdoor site in Eccleshall, which is currently leased by the force.
Police and crime panel chairman Bernard Peters asked the commissioner for an update on the scheme, during a discussion on the latest budget plans.
He said: “We see in the document and it’s been brought forward several times, a constant reference to the firing range. Coming at this from the outside, there isn’t a lot happening here. I know it’s an expensive piece of work. But what are your intentions regarding the firing range?”
Mr Adams, who is due to face re-election on May 2, told the panel that he was keen to see the issue resolved before the election.
He said: “This is very much a live subject. The planning has been approved. We have a project, we have a site, and we have a budget. But I have not finally signed it off yet. I have asked for one more look at the potential for sharing the resource with neighbours. I would expect to know within the next few weeks exactly where we’re going with that.
“The College [of Policing] have expectations around firearms training. We can’t anticipate those expectations getting any less demanding for all the right reasons.
“A lot of the original training programmes were based on firearms activity with people on rooftops, things like that. In recent years, where firearms officers have had to tackle terrorist events and things like that, they have nearly all involved operating out of the back of response vehicles.
"So the range has to allow for big vehicles to go into the range, and the team jumps out of the back and do their training – something that wasn’t imagined 20 years ago. So the world’s moved on.
“This is something I want to make sure is right for our firearms officers. At the moment the facility is not suitable. Working in a field is not appropriate.
“So I’m very hopeful of making a firm decision on that – that’s my plan – before the purdah period. I would like this not to be a question that preoccupies the service for another two or three years. It’s not helpful.”
The purdah period, which bars elected politicians from making major policy announcements, typically starts six weeks before an election.
