POLICE are hoping to open a satellite police station and increase their profile in a growing Suffolk town. The new station would give the police force added flexibility and enable officers to concentrate more on Kesgrave, which is now a major part of the Woodbridge sector.

By Richard Smith

POLICE are hoping to open a satellite police station and increase their profile in a growing Suffolk town.

The new station would give the police force added flexibility and enable officers to concentrate more on Kesgrave, which is now a major part of the Woodbridge sector.

Suffolk police is in negotiations to take over a building formerly used by vets close to the Tesco store on the Grange Farm estate.

A spokeswoman for Suffolk police said: “We are looking to get a site in Grange Farm to act as a police station to give them a base to go and work from and we hope to have it open within a few months, but that is subject to negotiation.

“It is not convenient for them to keep going back and forwards to Woodbridge Police Station and with a new base they will be in the community and will be able to patrol from that base.

“We have been aware that people in Kesgrave would like a higher profile police presence there, and there is a large population.”

Officers would be able to use the base 24 hours a day although it would probably be open to the public for fewer hours.

Kesgrave has seen an increase in the size of its population with hundreds of new homes being built and thousands of people moving into the area. It was formerly a village but became a town at the turn of the millennium.

There have been a range of crime problems in the Kesgrave area and recently magistrates in Ipswich backed a move by Suffolk Coastal District council to issue an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) against a young man to ban him from the Grange Farm area.

The latest crime figures also reveal Kesgrave has had above-average problems with criminal damage.

Between November 2002 and the end of January 2003, police attended the Twelve Acre Approach area more than 20 times to deal with complaints about noise and anti-social behaviour.