Police in Fort William were packing up yesterday as they prepare to move to a new police station more than two miles out of the town centre.
The existing police station on the High Street next door to the sheriff court will close its doors at 8pm today ahead of the new £4.7million premises at Blar Mor on the outskirts of the town opening at 8am tomorrow.
The move was welcomed yesterday by Lochaber councillor Brian Murphy, a former member of the Northern Joint Police Board, who dug the first turf at the new site last February.
He said: “This is a positive move, bearing in mind the old police station was showing its age and was not ideal for the modern demands of the service.
“The old police station has problems with the custody suite and insufficient parking among others. The new station is something that has been badly needed and the ambulance service will have joint use of the new facility.”
Questioned about the removal of the police station from the heart of the town, he said: “What the police say to us is that numbers of members of the public actually going into police stations has steadily fallen over the years. There are so many other ways of accessing the service with the internet and so on.
“As far as actual policing is concerned there will not be any reduction in the number of officers. There will be an increase in numbers because of the new traffic policing unit.”
The new building also houses a new Scottish Ambulance Service base for the area, and a road policing unit has been built on the site next to the A830 Fort William to Mallaig road, which could speed up time taken to reach accidents in Lochaber.
The nearest unit was previously in Dingwall and investigators had to travel a considerable distance to crashes in Lochaber.
Construction firm Miller Developments removed 65,400 cubic yards of peat from the site in order to build the new station.