Contracts on new police base in Corby to be signed within days

Speaking to the Northants Telegraph, the county’s top police officer described the original decision to move officers out of the town as ‘crazy’.

The former police station in Elizabeth Street, which was deemed not fit for purpose, closed in December 2017 after its fate was sealed three years earlier by former Police Crime Commissioner Adam Simmonds. Response officers moved to the Northern Accommodation Building (NAB) in Kettering and neighbourhood teams moved to Deene House.

Now Chief Constable Nick Adderley said that he will now bring officers back into the heart of Corby and that the force is days away from signing a contract to take on the space at the Cube, which has been empty since Corby Council built their iconic headquarters in 2010. There is already a police counter at the Cube which opens during office hours.

Corby will get a new police base a year after officers moved to Kettering

Chief Cons Adderley, who took on the role in August 2018, said: “We’re in the final stages of moving officers back into Corby.

“The reason it’s taken longer than we would like is that is that we wanted to make sure we had appropriate premises that were in the heart of the community.

“We’re in the final stages of negotiation and we hope it’ll be signed in the next few days.

“The neighbourhood teams will come out of Deene House along with response teams who will move from the NAB.

“It’s crazy that they took the Corby police teams out of the town. It would cost too many millions to put the police station in Elizabeth Street right.

“We should be grateful that the public in Corby wants to have that relationship with us and it’s right we get back into Corby.”

Cllr Mary Butcher, who died last week, had also spoken about how the closure of the police station had led to criminals running amok in the town because they could get away with it.

Labour’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Corby Beth Miller has headed-up a campaign to try to encourage the authorities to reinstate Corby’s police station.

Her Freedom of Information request found police response times to Corby on urgent calls had nearly doubled in the past decade

She said: “We’ve been campaigning for a proper police base back in the town for some months now and my petition has been signed by hundreds of local people who are rightly worried about rising crime following cuts to the police.

“The news today is certainly a step in the right direction. An increased police presence in the centre of town will act as a deterrent to the anti social behaviour we’ve seen in recent months. It will also hopefully help with quicker response times - this is something I have been concerned about as my research, through Freedom of Information requests shows a dramatic increase in response times to urgent issues in recent years.

“This is a step in the right direction but I’d still like to see more to be done, including a proper response base with suitable parking, a space for private reporting of sensitive issues and more done for our rural areas who have suffered countless burglaries in recent months.”

TOMORROW: Nick Adderley on why cannabis growers are targeting North Northants.

Frozen in time: inside Corby police station for the final time