A Note on the Closure of Rural Police-Stations and the Decline of Rural Policing in Britain Robert Smithã and Peter Somervilleãã Downloaded From

348 Article The Long Goodbye: A Note on the Closure of Rural Police-Stations and the Decline of Rural Policing in Britain Robert SmithÃ and Peter SomervilleÃÃ Downloaded from Abstract This research note documents the recent controversy surrounding the closure of police stations in the UK between 2007 and 2012. It examines the statistics as reported in the press and discusses the rhetoric used in the debate http://policing.oxfordjournals.org/ to draw conclusions about how the closure of police stations will affect rural policing and rural crime. Preserving the distinctiveness of reassurance. Major themes of this distinctive cul- rural policing tural identity is the ‘Constable (in the) Countryside’ Rural policing in Britain has a distinctive cultural (Yarwood and Cozens, 2004; Mawby and Yarwood, identity (Young, 1993; Yarwood and Cozens, 2004; 2010) and the eulogization of the ‘rural bobby’ (Smith, 2010). The rural bobby is now very much Mawby and Yarwood, 2010). In particular, at Georgetown University on July 12, 2015 Yarwood and Cozens remark on how police culture a part of the rural idyll (Mingay, 1989). in rural settings is distinctly different to that of Rural policing has been a feature of policing his- urban police culture. An integral part of the archi- tory in England and Wales since the Rural Policing tecture of rural policing is the police station as Act of 1839 (also referred to as the Rural symbol of public order. Indeed, the ubiquitous sta- Constabularies Act of 1839) and in Scotland since tion plays a major part in the architecture of public the Police (Scotland) Act 1857[for a discussion on reassurance (Millie, 2010, 2012) particularly in the the development of policing in Scotland, see the rural domain. Fleming and Grabosky (2009) argue works of Carson (1984, 1985). Carson argued that that as the policing role expands in Western demo- the social forces giving rise to the conditions under cratic societies, there is pressure to meet the de- which the institution of police could emerge was mands of an increasingly expectant public as the related to the development of capitalist relations ‘thin-blue-line’ becomes even more stretched due in Scotland necessitating the need for rural as well to the stresses of meeting public demand for as urban policing]. During the last decade, various ÃRobert Smith, Reader in entrepreneurship and SIPR Lecturer in Leadership, Aberdeen Business School, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK. E-mail: [email protected] ÃÃProf Peter Somerville, Professor of Social Policy, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lincoln, Brayford Pool, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, LN6 7TS. Policing, Volume 7, Number 4, pp. 348–358 doi:10.1093/police/pat031 ß The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions please e-mail: [email protected] Decline of Rural Policing in Britain Article Policing 349 scholars have warned of the demise of the ‘country to which persons under arrest are brought’. bobby’ caused by the closure of rural police However, a police-station can vary in size from a stations on efficiency and effectiveness grounds headquarters building to a small house or shop- (e.g. Neyroud, 2001; McLaughlin, 2008; front. In some areas smaller single room buildings Waddington and Neyroud, 2008; Mawby and known as ‘police boxes’ may still be in service. Yarwood, 2010; Smith et al., 2013). Waddington Police stations are defined by their size and and Neyroud (2008) highlight the closure issue functionality. For ‘rural’, we use the definition pro- linking it to performance management. We vided by the Scottish Government as a settle- review the literature to provide supporting empir- ment normally containing less than 3,000 people ical evidence highlighting this important topical (The Scottish Government, 2012). However, Downloaded from subject. villages can vary greatly in size because of the building of rural housing developments. A village of 3,000 inhabitants can double in size and still remain a village. A rural police station is simply a Reviewing the literature on rural http://policing.oxfordjournals.org/ policing and rural police stations police station located in such a settlement. The literature on police stations, whether urban As the subject of this note relates to Great Britain, or rural, is sparse (thankfully, evidence can be the review of the literature is confined to this con- gleaned from official documents, the web, and text (There are practical reasons for this approach from sources such as documents in the possession in that although there is some material on rural of The Police History Society. Moreover, much of policing in the USA and Australian contexts, there the knowledge in this section was gleaned by one of are so many different variables in respect of the the authors during interviews with rural police of- scale of rurality. However, it should be noted that ficers). It is helpful to begin with a discussion on the at Georgetown University on July 12, 2015 the closure of rural police stations is a phenomenon history and sitting of rural police stations. County which is affecting Northern Ireland and Eire too as Constabularies in Britain were organized on a vil- evidenced by numerous press reports. This is clearly lage basis and until the 1960s, most villages of any an emerging trend and may not be a purely British size less than 3,000 residents had a police house or problem). Although it deals primarily with the police station situated in them. Village stations closure of rural police stations, such closures are were often staffed by a single uniformed constable not confined to rural areas. However, in the and became known as ‘single stations’. Each police countryside the damage is more visible and more division had a number of such stations grouped difficult to reverse. We begin by defining what we around a larger station in a small country town mean by the terms ‘police station’ and ‘rural’. In the with a sergeant in residence (these were referred Collins online dictionary (http://dictionary.refer- to as ‘sub-divisional stations’ or ‘divisional stations’ ence.com or http://Collins.com), a police station depending on size). is defined as ‘the office or headquarters of the However, from the early 1900s some stations police force of a district’. Historically, police sta- were also sited in the open countryside near busy tions were also referred to as ‘station-houses’ be- road junctions. The deciding factor revolved cause often police officers lived on the premises. around the transport technology of the time and However, this was not an arrangement whereby upon how long it would take an officer on foot/ the house served as a police station (as in the cycle to travel between stations. Cars changed the Japanese Ko¯ban). Dictionary.com further elabor- dynamics of policing by reducing response times to ates, referring to a police station as premises incidents and reports of crime making the country- ‘...from which police officers are dispatched and side more accessible. The advent of police panda 350 Policing Article R. Smith and P. Somerville patrol cars in the 1950–60s changed this formula attention to the inexorable closure of rural police drastically leading to the first round of wholesale stations, along with the demise of the ‘rural bobby’ police station closures as many villages lost their and the deskilling of the rural policing function in ‘local bobby’ for good. Mawby and Yarwood Scotland. (2010, p. 64) refer to this process of ‘gradual’ clos- Millie (2012) articulated the importance of the ure. Since then closures have occurred on oper- police station within the architecture of public ational grounds based on the decision of a Chief order and community safety. He suggested that Police Officer. Indeed, Yarwood and Cozens police stations communicate emotive messages to (2004) suggest that senior police managers often the public and that through an understanding of justified closures of rural police stations or under semiotics it is possible to argue that police stations Downloaded from resourcing of rural policing by alluding to the idyl- contribute to public reassurance, because members lic misrepresentation of the countryside as crime- of the public attach meanings or ‘emotive readings’ free. However, what differentiates current closures to the stations as symbolic structures. However, from previous ones is that they are primarily aus- Millie stresses that in order to understand this, we http://policing.oxfordjournals.org/ terity measures to prune budgets. Neyroud (2001) need to rethink what message existing stations spoke of the closure of police stations as a burning actually communicate, because buildings can issue and that the phrase ‘hard-to-reach’ groups in mean different things to different people. He sug- police consultation (originally code for ‘ethnic gests that in an urban environment a particular po- minorities’) expanded to include some rural resi- lice station may be read as an intimidating fortress, dents. The studies of McLaughlin (2008) drew whereas others are potentially public buildings attention to the logic of unintended consequences where the public are welcomed. Thus, to the inhab- of a performance management framework in the itants of a rural village their local police station may UK—namely plans to close traditional ‘blue lamp’ be read as a symbol of reassurance, whereas to a at Georgetown University on July 12, 2015 police stations on grounds of economy and effect- bureaucrat it may be an unnecessary

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