Reduced opening hours for two local police stations

The decision was taken following a review into counter services and the new opening times will be introduced from July. Hungerford station will be open from 10am until 2pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Its previous operating hours were 9am until 1pm Monday to Friday.
A similar change will affect Pangbourne, which will be open from 10am until 2pm on Monday to Friday, having previously been open Monday to Thursday 8am until 4pm and Friday 8am until 3.30pm.
Newbury Police Station will not be affected by any changes and will remain open seven days a week, and Lambourn police point, which is run by volunteers, will not be hit by any reduction either.
The police commander of the West Berkshire area, supt Robin Rickard, said no officers would be removed from streets and the emergency response teams would not be affected.
“They remain on patrol 24-hours-a-day across the area and will continue to operate as normal,” he said.
“I want to reassure the community that this is not about removing officers from our streets. The visibility and availability of police officers to attend incidents is not affected by front counter opening times.
“We know that the role of counter services is much valued by the public and we have worked very hard to maintain a high level of service provision in the face of substantial budget cuts across the whole of Thames Valley Police.”
A consultation exercise between staff, the public and partner agencies took place to determine the changes, which were implemented due to a lack of use of the facilities at certain times of the day.
Thames Valley Police must save £50 million over the next four years after huge cuts to its budget were announced by the Government last year.