The first steps in replacing the Winchester Police Centre at Belconnen are under way, with $687,000 set aside in the ACT budget to investigate both a new police headquarters and a much-needed new station for Gungahlin.
Separate to this, $258,000 has been allocated to relocate the Traffic Operations Centre from its current Lathlain Street premises to a new site, most likely in Canberra's south.
Accommodation has been a regular sore point between police and government, with law enforcement officers envious of the facilities and funds directed toward the ACT-run Emergency Services Agency
Policing services in Canberra are wrapped into a legal contract between the ACT government and the Australian Federal Police, which means that facilities provided to police are mostly ACT government assets leased through the Justice and Community Safety directorate.
Several of these properties have far exceeded their use-by date, according to the police association.
The leaky, hazardous Traffic Operations Centre on Lathlain Street in Belconnen is seen as a high priority, as is the tiny Gungahlin police station, a building which police officers currently share with ambulance and firefighters despite the need to patrol one of Australia's fastest-growing suburban areas.
The Traffic Operations Centre was the subject of a Comcare investigation late last year after its roof was badly damaged during the January 2020 hailstorm.
Issues with the building remained, including electrical hazards, multiple trip and slip hazards, water leaks and pooling of water in the workplace, and fire safety problems.
The Director-General of the Justice and Community Safety directorate, Richard Glenn, said these three funding allocations "dropped out" of the broader master accommodation strategy for the police.
No specific funding was attached to the relocation because Mr Glenn said the directorate was "in the middle of a commercial negotiation to secure a property which would be taken on, and a little bit of fit-out done to it, to properly accommodate the TOC".
"What I can say is that the needs of the Traffic Operations Centre include a relatively large space to accommodate the vehicles that are held there.
"We benefitted from some earlier investigations around where the TOC should go ... and the funding is now in place to bring that to actuality."
Directly in front of it is the Winchester Police Centre, the ACT's former technical training school repurposed and leased to ACT Policing for its headquarters in 1994. The study will assess whether the site should be redeveloped, or the current building refurbished.
The police association had previously described Gungahlin's police station as "not fit for purpose".
