POLICE Scotland has dropped plans to share a major regional headquarters with a council just as it trumpets similar radical plans across the country.
The national force last week won approval for an ambitious new strategy to save millions of pounds by downsizing stations and co-locating offices with other agencies.
But it has now emerged that it did so after pulling out of a flagship joint scheme highlighted by Chief Constable Sir Stephen House as recently as April.
Police Scotland has decided it cannot run an operational police station from a building it had hoped to share with West Dunbartonshire Council in the historic but much-neglected heart of Dumbarton.
Instead, the force will keep a small counter service in the new building - which will save the facade of old Dumbarton Academy - while retaining its existing but ageing base outside the centre.
Chief Superintendent Grant Manders, the divisional commander in Dumbarton, said: "The opportunity to co-locate to the new council facility was fully discussed, however it was agreed the new site was not a suitable location for a fully functioning operational police office.
"We will have a permanent presence within the Council's new offices and discussions are ongoing to establish the extent of this.
"This opportunity highlights the benefits that can be achieved by co-location and allows us to make our services more accessible to the local community.
"Dumbarton Police Office will be retained although we will continue to work with council and other local partners to look longer term at the options available for maintaining and building the service that we provide."
The police base in Dumbarton is right next to the West Dunbartonshire's equally crumbling HQ. Both buildings date from the era of Strathclyde Police and Strathclyde Regional Council and both took jobs and economic activity away from the centre of Dumbarton, which has struggled ever since.
Council leader Martin Rooney had hoped both properties could be sold together, creating a major new housing development that would help to pay for the new HQ, which will bring at least 500 council staff back in to Dumbarton.
Asked why the co-location was not happening, Mr Rooney said: "This was entirely down the police. We were very keen on the idea of sharing with the police and making savings on overheads, like cleaning, and bringing regeneration to Dumbarton town centre.
"The police withdrew for their own reasons. We had hoped they would put another 50-60 staff and we had space for 25 of their vehicles."
Council insiders are unable to say how much the police decision will cost them, but they will face substantially increased overheads and potentially lower capital receipts from the sale of their existing base.
Police Scotland have highlighted several success of co-locations, including Livingston, which now has council, police and courts in one place. This would have been the case in Dumbarton too: the local sheriff court, recently modernised, is right next to the proposed new HQ.
The co-location proposals came just as Police Scotland proposed merging its Dumbarton division, which runs from Clydebank to Tiree, with neighbouring Renfrewshire.
A campaign to counter this - and keep an HQ in Dumbarton - was launched with support from local MSP, Jackie Baillie.
She said: "When Police Scotland initially launched its consultation on centralising policing divisions, they made no mention of maintaining a fully-operational police station in Dumbarton.
"It was only following a huge outcry from members of the public that Police Scotland changed its proposals to include a firm guarantee on remaining in the existing local station.
"Police Scotland entered into detailed discussions some time ago with a view to co-locating the police office with the council.
"The police, however, suddenly went cold on the idea not long before its plan to merge divisions was announced, fuelling suspicion that the real intention of the merger was to remove front-counter services.
"The experience of what happened in Dumbarton really flies in the face of Police Scotland's whole estates strategy.
"By getting tangled up in plans for wholesale structural change and centralisation they damaged trust with the local community and lost the opportunity to co-locate services."
Police Scotland, under its new estate strategy, proposes slashing the total floorspace of the force's offices, garages and other facilities by as much as a quarter, saving between £5 million to £18m a year.
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