'Vanity project' jibe over £33m police HQ

Humberside Police has said it needs to move to comply with new standards for custody suites, and says the quality and number of cells at Queens Gardens, a site it has occupied for 50 years, are inadequate.

In May the police authority approved spending an extra 7m on a new building in Clough Road, to house staff and facilities from other police stations, including Tower Grange.

But Coun Colin Inglis, the former chairman of Humberside Police Authority, said the costs of borrowing extra money would impact frontline services at a time when the force is bracing itself for cuts of up to 30m.

Coun Inglis said: "My first problem is that there isn't enough public information for taxpayers to make a sensible judgement on whether it is a good project overall or whether it is a vanity project.

"At first sight it looks like a vanity project because it has expanded vastly beyond what I accept was the need for new custody facilities."

Coun Inglis – who faced criticism when he was chairman for raising local chargepayers' bills to pay for new stations and officers – added: "The extra borrowing will have an inevitable revenue cost that will impact on frontline services. Now is not the time to be running off borrowing money."

In a statement Deputy Chief Constable David Griffin said they were pressing ahead with the project but would "explore ways of reducing the overall cost."

He added that developing the Clough Road site was necessary because Queens Gardens Police Station and some other premises used by police in Hull were not fit for future policing purposes.