State of the Art new Police Headquarters for the States of Jersey
A huge and impressive new £22 million five-storey state of the art headquarters for the States of Jersey Police is under construction at Route Du Fort, St Helier.
The building’s design incorporates state-of-the-art technology that will help support advancements in policing. The 7,200 sq m facility includes a 20-cell custody suite, open plan operational support areas to allow agile working, a central control room, and specialist CSI facilities.
The new custody suite incorporates the very latest systems allowing effective round-the-clock monitoring of detainees to ensure the needs of at-risk detainees are met.
However, much of the building is given over to the administration and office space that is required to run a police force.
The building superstructure is a reinforced concrete frame with masonry infill walls where required. There is a transfer structure at ground floor level over a car park grid to the basement below.
At ground level, there are blast plates should explosives be used in an attack. Similarly, key pillars are bomb-proof and walls have also been secured against blast damage.
A total of 266 piles were driven twelve metres into the ground while creating the foundation of the building, which contains 1,000 tonnes of steel and roughly 4,500 cubic metres of concrete.
Vehicle access off Route du Fort is provided both to the custody suite at ground floor level and to the basement parking. As part of the project, an extension to the top level of Green Street multi-storey car park has been constructed to replace an open car park area.
The construction has presented a number of challenges which have required careful planning to overcome – for example the need to get thousands of tonnes of material, support structures and equipment to the building site, from only one access point at the front of the site.
The building was designed by IBI Group, with ROK-Regal Construction Limited as Main Contractors and the Jersey Department for Infrastructure as Project Managers and Arup as Structural Engineers.
Jersey Home Affairs Minister, Deputy Kristina Moore said that the project will provide: “Much-needed suitable premises for our police force so that they can continue to meet the demands of the community. The States of Jersey Police have waited a long time to be provided with accommodation which suits the needs of a modern police service.”
Infrastructure Minister, Deputy Eddie Noel, said “This project will, at last, provide the fit for purpose building from which our police can operate.
The project commenced in October 2014 with completion expected in December 2016, with the States of Jersey Police completing their fit-out and moving in during the first quarter of 2017.
The States of Jersey Police (Police des États de Jersey) is the official police service of Jersey. It was established in its current form by the Police Force (Jersey) Law, 1974.
The States of Jersey Police currently operates with a funded establishment of 228 police officers and about 100 civilian staff. The high ratio of police officers to civilian staff reflects a practical need to maintain operational resilience.
Many officers are trained in specialist skills over and above those needed for their normal duties so that they can be called upon at any time to perform specialist roles. These might include firearms, search, surveillance, siege negotiation, collision investigation, public order, CBRN response and family or sexual offence liaison.
