Approval granted for £75m redevelopment of Lancashire Police HQ

Lancashire Police headquarters are to get a £75m overhaul to make the force’s South Ribble base 'fit for the 21st century'.

The bold blueprint for the site in Hutton first emerged just over a year ago and has now been granted planning permission.

Lancashire’s police and crime commissioner Andrew Snowden told South Ribble Borough Council’s planning committee that the transformation – which will involve the demolition of dozens of buildings – was urgently needed in order to bring the sprawling facility up to the standards required for present-day policing.

Nevertheless, the eight-phase redevelopment will take between 10 and 12 years to complete, with construction work taking place intermittently during that period.

The scheme will cover both the main HQ site on Saunders Lane and nearby facilities on Lindle Lane, which house the constabulary’s dogs and horses.

As part of the revamp, extensions to the existing headquarters building will be removed and a new one added. The remaining part of the structure will get what is described in planning documents as a “cosmetic upgrade” – and the completed facility will boast a “coherent design more suited to modern working practices”. Two new vehicle maintenance unit buildings will also be created, along with a decked car park and new kennels and stables.

The headquarters were first developed in the late 1930s and saw significant expansion after the Second World War. The most recent new building is itself now 30 years old and Andrew Snowden told planning committee members – who were taken on a tour of the site ahead of considering the application – that the Lancashire force was “trying to run cutting-edge police servicing in the 2020s with infrastructure dating back to the 1960s”.

He added: “It only takes a short amount of time to appreciate why 95 percent of the buildings on the two HQ sites are graded as unfit for purpose. There is an urgent need to create a fit-for-purpose headquarters that can support and enable an efficient and effective policing service for our county.

“The headquarters is far more than just offices – it hosts a number of operational, investigative and digital capabilities. The proposal secures the site as a green, open and well-managed…one which is vastly improved visibly and operationally,” Mr. Snowden said.

The committee heard that an alternative option would be to sell off the greenbelt site and for the constabulary to move elsewhere, but the commissioner said: “That is not what we want, it is not what the local community would want and…certainly not what the local economy would want.”

Cllt Phil Smith, who is another of the ward councillors for the area, said that the while the presence of the headquarters is sometimes a source of “aggravation” for locals, “one of the last things” he would want to see is for the facility to be shut down and the land repurposed.

“Having them close by must be a great benefit to Hutton…and the people that live locally – you’re never far from a police officer,” he said.

Meanwhile, as part of the later phases of the redevelopment, there is a plan to create a new direct access to the headquarters site from the A59 Liverpool Road roundabout.

The committee unanimously approved the application, granting full planning permission for the first three phases of the redevelopment – across both Saunders Lane and Lindle Lane – and outline permission for the remaining stages, which will be concentrated on the main HQ site and which will require further approval when the details are brought forward at a later date.