Thanks must go to the Ham&High for sponsoring the debate at Hampstead Town Hall on the future of police stations in Camden. For many years Camden s Independent Custody Visitors have been campaigning for a new custody suite. At the meeting the Met admitte

Thanks must go to the Ham&High for sponsoring the debate at Hampstead Town Hall on the future of police stations in Camden.

For many years Camden's Independent Custody Visitors have been campaigning for a new custody suite. At the meeting the Met admitted that the cells at Kentish Town were 'embarrassing'. To those who have to work or who are detained there, this will not come as any surprise, only as something of a big understatement.

The custody suite at Albany Street is only a little better. It is only by having a new and bigger custody suite that the medical, judicial and welfare needs of the 12,000 or so people detained each year in Camden can be met in conditions appropriate to 2008 and not more reminiscent of those in 1896 when Kentish Town cells were built.

Similarly police and civilian staff must have the right to have proper working conditions. It was thus gratifying to hear the Met representative state that the building of the much need new custody suite could go ahead as it was not dependent on decisions about the modernisation and location of police stations in Camden.

I hope that those who continue to oppose MPA plans about the modernisation of police stations in Camden will now actively support the much needed building of a new custody suite.

Mick Farrant

Former chair. Camden ICV Panel