Public exhibition this week shows plans to transform site into school

Fulham Police Station is now permanently closed and local people are being invited to an exhibition at St John's Church on Wednesday and Thursday to view plans to transform the Heckfield Place building into The Fulham Boys School.

On Monday evening, June 6, police @MPSHammFul tweeted this picture from the station with the message: " The final sunset at Fulham Police Station. #FHTeamE are the last response team to parade from Fulham #overandout."

The exhibition is being held by the Education Funding Agency, which bought the building, which it describes as "underused and outdated" from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.

It says redevelopment of the site will include; a Police Front Counter, maintaining the current police public access provision for the communities of Fulham, The Fulham Boys School, nine new homes and facilities available for possible community use.

The agency says designs have been developed by Architecture Initiative who will be at the exhibition along with other members of the project team and representatives of The Fulham Boys School which is currently based at a temporary site on the Gibbs Green Estate in West Kensington.

The team will be able to talk through the plans, answer any questions and listen to feedback before a planning application is submitted by the Education Funding Agency to the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham this month.

However, H&F Council has already criticised the proposals, which would leave the borough hwith only one 24 hour police station in Hammersmith.

When the plans were first announced last year by the then mayor Boris Johnson, Cllr Michael Cartwright, H&F Council's Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour says: " This is yet another example of police services in the borough being attacked by the government and the Mayor of London.

" We support Fulham Boys School and are therefore hugely disappointed that after a year of promises by the mayor to find a decent site he’s not been able to come up with anything better than closing an important police station.

" Fulham residents need a fully functional police station. The Mayor must come clean about what the sale of the building means for a police presence in a fast growing area. He has said that there will be a '‘front counter' service, but what does that mean? How will response times be affected in emergencies? How many officers will be stationed in Fulham after much of the station is closed?"

These questions may be answered at the public exhibition which is taking place at St John's Fulham, at the southern end of North End Road on Wednesday and Thursday, June 8 and 9 from 2pm till 7pm on both days.

June 7, 2016