SALISBURY Police Inspector Andy Noble has declared the closure of the city’s police station in Wilton Road an “absolute necessity” as austerity cuts mean a stark choice between “bricks and people”.

Speaking at a meeting of Salisbury Area Board on Thursday, he said some “very difficult decisions” had to be taken to ensure frontline services were protected.

Calling the building a “luxury we can no longer afford”, Insp Noble said the choice was between an emotional attachment to a building that was expensive to run and not fit for purpose or people that provide the police service.

Wiltshire Police has been tasked with delivering savings of £15m by the end of 2014 and the latest round of government cuts could mean further savings have to be found before then.

Insp Noble said: “We have made a large number of reductions to back office function and we are streamlining ourselves. We have cut all the fat and we are right into the lean.”

He said the force has had an ongoing strategic partnership with Wiltshire Council for the last couple of years and in the future areas such as human resources, ICT and estate will be integrated.

The aim was for Wiltshire Police, which currently has 23 sites in the county, to have several “pure police sites” and the rest be integrated with the council such as at the new community campus planned at Five Rivers Leisure Centre in Salisbury.

He said this would not only enable “great savings” but was also a “massive opportunity” to improve services for people. “If you did a straw poll on the causation factors of crime, most would point to families with problems such as drug and alcohol abuse, sub-standard housing and people with mental health difficulties. My beat managers are dealing with these families on a daily basis.

“It’s absolute nonsense that we do this in isolation – what the campus project will bring is the opportunity for a police officer, a social worker and a housing officer etc to all sit around the table – it makes sense.”

He added: “We are very clear about what’s appropriate at the campus and what isn’t. Serious, dangerous and violent offenders, for example, will not be going to the campus.”

Responding to fears that the location of the new custody suite would be in Melksham or Southampton, he said there was “a lot of wholly inaccurate speculation” and that it would “certainly” be in the “Salisbury area”.

Under the plans, the custody suite will remain in Wilton Road until April 2014. A temporary solution could see the force purchasing or hiring modular custody units until a more permanent solution is found.

These involve portable cabins which incorporate cells, interview rooms, medical rooms and other facilities that all bolt together and can be placed into an existing warehouse. Investigation officers will be based with the custody suite while the response unit and neighbourhood policing teams are set to be based at the campus.

However until it is built, officers will be in other Wiltshire Council premises in the city such as the library and Bourne Hill offices. The response unit, which reacts to 999 calls, is likely to move to Amesbury Police Station as a temporary measure. Insp Noble said the decision to accept the UTC bid was only taken on June 19 and had accelerated the time for change – it meant that the force now had to be out of the Wilton Road station by this Christmas instead of next.

He said: “Does this concern me? Yes. Does it concern my staff? Yes. It will be a challenge but it would have been absolutely ridiculous for us not to take that bid when the site is at the end of its life.

“It is a wrench, it feels uncomfortable but it must be done. It is the right decision in terms of maintaining our frontline service delivery.”