Ownership of an iconic Aberdeen building which served as the north-east’s policing headquarters for almost 50 years has been taken over by the city council.
Sale of the Queen Street police station in the Granite City centre came after Police Scotland relocated to Marischal College.
Over the last 10 months, 500 members of staff have transferred into facilities shared with both Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire councils.
Further police personnel have also moved to six other buildings run by the force.
The former north-east police headquarters was built around 50 years ago when the legacy constabulary, Grampian Police was founded in 1975.
The building was state of the art at the time it opened, but decades on, it became burdened with high maintenance costs, poor energy efficiency and access issues.
Divisional Commander Chief Superintendent Kate Stephen said: “Our city centre policing team is fully settled into Marischal College and the dedicated service they provide to the city centre community has not changed.
“The police public counter, situated within the Aberdeen City Council customer service centre is more accessible than it was at Queen Street and the public now has the benefit of being able to enquire about council and police matters at the same location.”
A dedicated in-house team coordinated the relocation and worked tirelessly to make sure the environmental impact of the project was as small as possible.
Furniture and equipment were either repurposed internally or donated to charity and unusable items were broken down and separated for recycling.
Ch. Supt. Stephen added: “The anticipated carbon emissions savings from moving out of Queen Street is 793 tonnes per year.”
It’s the first project of its kind and already considered by top cops to be delivering “tangible benefits”.
Police chiefs plan to use the project as a “template” for integration measures elsewhere across Scotland.
‘Co-location brings benefits’
Assistant Chief Constable, Local Policing North, John Hawkins said: “Co-location brings a number of benefits to the way we can work together with local authorities to help communities far more than we have been able to in the past.
“It reduces our environmental footprint and provides financial savings that we can use to invest more in our people and technology.
“The North East Division Integration Project (NEDIP) here in Aberdeen is the first estates project of this magnitude to be undertaken by Police Scotland and has already demonstrated tangible benefits to our staff, the way we work and in turn to the public we serve.
“This will be used as the template for similar integration projects in other areas of Scotland as we develop enhanced services to serve the public.”
Although the police owned parts of the Queen Street building have been sold to Aberdeen City Council, the mortuary and courts offices continue to operate on-site.
