Training college starts to take shape

By Vincent Kearney
BBC NI home affairs correspondent

The training college is to be completed in four years' time

There's been a lot of talk about a new police college here in recent years, but very little action.

That's all about to change as the £130m funding needed for the project has now been put in place.

A 210 acre site near Cookstown was selected for a new state of the art police training college more than four years ago.

It was one of the police reforms recommended by the Patten report nine years ago, but work has still not started, and many were beginning to believe it never would.

But work is finally going to get under way. Adverts will be placed shortly asking for design teams to come forward to submit their plans for what the police say will be one of the best training facilities in the world.

Sod turning

The contract to build the college will be put out to tender early next year and the first sod should be turned early in 2010, with the facility expected to open before the end of 2012.

And it will no longer simply be a police college - the Prison Service and the Fire and Rescue Service will also use the facility.

Initially, the police wanted to build their own college, costing an estimated £130m, while the fire and rescue service had planned a centre costing around £30m, and the prison service hoped to build new facilities costing up to £10m. Now they will share the site and save around £40m.

The training college is to be completed in four years' time

The decision to make the college a shared facility was essential to make it financially viable, but also contributed to the delay.

The police and prison services are not devolved, so the Treasury will provide their share of the funding, but the fire and rescue service is accountable to the Stormont Assembly, so its funding contribution had to be signed of by the Department of Finance and Personnel.

Some of the money will be raised by selling off existing facilities. The current police training college in Garnerville in east Belfast will be sold off, and should fetch several million pounds as it is in a prime location for housing development.

The Fire and Rescue Service training centre on the Boucher Road, another much sought-after location, will also be sold.

That will bring an end to the ridiculous situation where fire crews can only practice fighting fire for two hours on a Sunday because the centre is so close to residential areas. When the Cookstown centre opens it will have a specially constructed "burn house" and other facilities the fire service can set alight as often as they wish.

Hotel and bars

The other facilities will include a firing range for the police, a purpose-built village to train officers in a variety of real life situations - including an hotel, bars and a range of other buildings - a prison wing, dozens of classrooms and accommodation for more than 300 people.

News that the project has finally been given the green light has been welcomed by the SDLP's Alex Attwood, who was a member of the policing board when it chose Cookstown as the preferred site, and who hopes the Irish government will contribute to the running costs.

It is crucial that from the very first day recruits are surrounded by the new policing ethos demanded by the Good Friday Agreement Martin McGuinness

"We are well pleased given the disadvantage that general area has suffered over the decades," he said.

"I think it's also accessible to everybody, and think and hope very much that the southern authorities will make full use of the college and may in due course contribute to its running costs."

Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein MP for Mid-Ulster, said he hoped the opening of the new college in Cookstown would help build a new relationship between the police and the nationalist and republican community.

"It is crucial that from the very first day recruits are surrounded by the new policing ethos demanded by the Good Friday Agreement," he said.