Cookstown police centre gets go ahead
Thursday, 14 August 2008
MORE than four years ago an area outside Cookstown was initially identified as the site to house Northern Ireland's new state of the art police training centre.
Due to funding problems some believed the centre was doomed to remain on the drawing board but the PSNI has just announced that funding is in place and that the first sod will be turned early 2010 with the centre hopefully being completed in 2012.
This new centre was one of the police reforms recommended by the Patten report nine years ago. The news was met by cross party support with many hoping it will herald a new dawn regarding policing in the North.
Sinn Féin MP for Mid-Ulster Martin McGuinness said that the decision to site the new Police Training College in Cookstown must mark the start of an entirely new relationship between the PSNI and the nationalist and republican community.
Mr McGuinness said, "Aside from the obvious economic benefits the decision to site the new college will have for the Cookstown area, the key function of this new facility must be to build a new relationship between the PSNI and the nationalist and republican community.
“In this area in the past the nationalist and republican community have rightly viewed policing with deep suspicion. The PSNI must now demonstrate clearly that they can police this community impartially. It is vital that the PSNI cast off any remaining vestiges of the old RUC and the closure of the Garnerville training college and its replacement with the one in Cookstown is part of all of this. It is crucial that from the very first day recruits are surrounded by the new policing ethos demanded by the Good Friday Agreement.
The 210 acre site will not just be home to the Police college but will also house the Prison service and the Fire and Rescue service. These new admissions to the centre caused further delay but finally things seem to be gathering pace.
UUP MLA for Mid Ulster Billy Armstrong has welcomed the news saying, "There were many problems to solve and obstacles to get over with regards to funding, but they have been overcome and we look forward to the details of this to be released next week."
“The Academy will be a huge boost for the local economy and will raise Cookstown's profile not only in Northern Ireland but in the whole of the UK."
SDLP Mid-Ulster MLA Patsy McGlone echoed those thoughts when he said, "I hope that this issue has at last been sorted out and proper funding will be announced next week as expected. We have had far too much government dithering. Nearly a decade has passed since the Patten Commission recommended that we should have such a college. We have been waiting for four years since the initial announcement that Cookstown had been chosen as the location. It is more than two years since the Assembly supported Cookstown as the site to have all the necessary resources to be a world-class centre, not only for police training, but for all the emergency services.
"I would also hope it could become a centre of excellence for police forces across the world especially those in or emerging from conflict zones. This will be good for the local economy in Mid-Ulster, Cookstown, good for policing and good for political progress, now that the DUP/Sinn Fein axis is at last attempting to sort itself out on devolution of policing and justice instead of creating new roadblocks."
DUP MLA for Mid-Ulster, Ian McCrea said, "There are new areas where policing will have to focus in the years ahead. With terrorism less prevalent in the province, there are new challenges including dealing with drugs offences, sleeper crimes, road safety, antisocial behaviour and improving clearance rates. Policing is changing all the time, and the Cookstown college will have a central role to play in the development of high quality policing in the years ahead."
