Traffic police numbers cut
Chieveley base closes, but police dismiss claims that parts of West Berkshire will not be patrolled by traffic officers
THAMES Valley Police has admitted road police numbers in West Berkshire have been cut but has dismissed claims that some areas of the district will not be patrolled by any traffic officers.
A letter to Newburytoday.co.uk from a Newbury whistleblower, who asked not to be named, claimed the force had closed its Newbury traffic base and that there were no traffic officers left patrolling the town.
His letter was responding to a letter published on September 15 in regards to speed cameras on Andover Road.
He said officers from the traffic base Newbury were relocated to Three Mile Cross in Reading, with officers at Reading moved along to Taplow.
“West Berkshire is now covered from Reading with fewer officers, who have double the area to police,” he said.
“If you live in Hungerford or Lambourn you will never probably see a traffic car again.”
He said with cutbacks, and abstractions such as court, annual leave and sick leave it could leave only three Pcs to deal with all the issues that the road policing department tackle for the whole of West Berkshire and Reading.
Chief inspector Gill Wootton, from the Thames Valley roads policing unit, has said over the last year the entire unit had been restructured.
“The suggestion that Hungerford and Lambourn will 'never see a traffic car again' is inaccurate,” she said.
“The department needed to realign with structural changes in the wider force: Rather than being based in five basic command units, roads policing now consists of three regions, headed by a regional inspector, aligned to the county boundaries.”
She said it had been a decision between Thames Valley and Hampshire Constabulary to merge certain sections of the forces into new units, including traffic units, to deliver more efficient working practices and significant financial savings.
Of the former three traffic bases in Berkshire, Chieveley was closed to consolidate teams and supervisors on two sites. Officers and supervisors were redistributed to the other bases in Berkshire (Three Mile Cross and now Taplow) and also into the other two counties, to provide equitable resources across the entire force.
“This has resulted in an inevitable reduction of officer numbers in the roads policing units in both forces, but enables both forces to benefit from sharing the additional resources available to them in the other force,” she said.
“The number of our existing traffic bases was unsustainable and needed to be reduced to enable resources to be consolidated more effectively and deployed more efficiently.
“Performance across the force including that in West Berkshire is being maintained and service delivery in West Berkshire in particular, is being monitored to ensure that community needs are met and adverse impacts minimised.”
