PLANS have been unveiled for a £24 million office facility which could be used as a West of Scotland base for the country's new national police service.
The site in Dalmarnock, Glasgow, forms part of the Clyde Gateway regeneration project and is tipped to replace the city's Pitt Street police office which is outdated and costly to run.
Construction firm Morgan Sindall has been awarded the contract to build the 120,000 sq ft facility, due to be completed in October next year.
The Scottish Government has contributed £16 million of funding towards the building, while the rest of the money will be provided by Clyde Gateway.
The site was once put forward as a potential national headquarters for Police Scotland, but officials have confirmed it will now only be considered as a base in the west. A spokesman for the Scottish Police Authority, which holds the new force to account, said: "The SPA is not against the idea of the building ultimately being used for a policing purpose, but we have made it quite clear that it should not be the force's headquarters. There are arguments in favour of needing to move away from the Pitt Street facility because of its age and lack of efficiency but the details of any move still have to be worked through."
He added that any decision on the site is still a long way off, however, Clyde Gateway said they were quietly confident of attracting a "significant tenant".
A Clyde Gateway spokesman said: "This is the site that Strathclyde Police had been considering in respect of their relocation from Pitt Street. What we've decided to do, as a result of the £16 million from the Government, is put some of our own resources towards it on a speculative basis while we await a decision on that."
It now looks likely that the new force's headquarters will be in Stirling.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article