New £23m police station without custody suite 'waste' of time

Plans for a new £23m police station without a custody suite near a city are a "waste of police time and public money", councillors have said.

Wiltshire Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Philip Wilkinson has defended the proposal for the Southern Policing Hub in Old Sarum, north of Salisbury, in an open letter.

Councillor Paul Sample said: "Every hour an officer spends transporting and supervising a detainee outside South Wiltshire is an hour in which that officer is unavailable to respond to another incident."

Wilkinson says the force "simply cannot afford" it, but added: "We are buying six acres, which does give us enough space to have a custody suite should our funding formula change."

The Home Office said the force would receive "a record sum" this year.

The custody unit in Wilton Road closed in 2014 in a bid to make £3m of cuts.

Since then, prisoners have been transported to the nearest one - the Bourne Hill unit in Melksham, nearly 29 miles (47 km) away - and to Swindon.

At the time, Wiltshire's then PCC Angus Macpherson said he could not justify spending more than £10m of public money to build a new facility between Melksham and Salisbury.

He added the Salisbury suite had been under-used was and in need of "significant renovation".

However, Sample said the former police station had "absolutely excellent up-to-date state-of-the-art cells".

Additionally, councillor Chris Taylor said he "found it hard to believe the building couldn't be refurbished" when it was then converted into Salisbury Academy for Inspirational Learning.

Taylor added the people of Salisbury had been "badly misled", having been promised a new police station with a holding facility for 12 years.

In November 2017, the Police Federation - which then represented 120,000 rank-and-file officers across the UK - said crime suspects were being freed due to there being no custody unit within a 30-mile radius, leading to a "drop of arrests in Wiltshire".

Between July 2025 and June 2026, Wiltshire Police reported 302 detainees who had been arrested in Salisbury city centre were taken to custody suites in Melksham or Swindon, a published freedom of information request revealed.

Taylor said: "Clearly police officers are now having to face decisions over whether to arrest somebody or not."

Sample told the BBC any new police development in South Wiltshire has to include a custody suite.

"If not, the reality is the millions of pounds that have already been wasted will continue to be wasted," he said.

The PCC, Wilkinson, added: "We do have the third-lowest crime rate, but any single crime is one crime too many and one victim is one victim too many."

Wiltshire Police remains the third-lowest funded force per head of population in England.

Wilkinson explained that as PCC, this year he has "to save £4.6m out of our budget - last year was £8m.

"We cannot continue like this. We need better funding to deliver the service the public want.

"We could be doing better if we had more money, but right now we are doing more with less than probably any other police force in the country," he added.

The Home Office said: "We are delivering the biggest reforms to policing in over 200 years to allow forces to focus on protecting their community and make the public safer.

"Police force funding is at a historic high of £18.5bn, and Wiltshire Police will also receive a record sum of funding this year of more than £180m."

The Wiltshire PCC's office said it could not publicise a figure for how much a custody suite at Old Sarum would cost.

Following a public consultation this summer, the PCC is expected to submit an outline planning permission proposal for the new police station this month.

Sample said he "very much" hoped the current plans would not be approved. "It's not right in terms of the safety of our local residents, who deserve to have a much better service from their police force with more officers on the beat rather than sitting as taxi drivers."

Follow BBC Wiltshire on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.