The battle to establish a Police Local Area Command Centre at Kingscliff goes on next week, with the northern Joint Regional Planning Panel to hold a meeting at Tweed Heads Civic Centre on Wednesday, November 21 at 4pm to discuss the matter.
An application for the command centre went back to the JRPP after the recent Land and Environment Court’s decision to find the consent for the development application to demolish the existing police station and adjoining two residences invalid.
The Tweed Business and Residents Focus Group, set up to fight the proposal, is encouraging all concerned residents to attend this session and, if you are interested in speaking against this development, to contact Paul McMahon on 0413 056 400 to register your interest.
“Even our local MP made this statement about the Marine Parade site: ‘It’s not a platinum solution’,” Focus group president Paul McMahon said.
“The judge was also critical of how the develop-ment was described in the public notifications as a new police station, when it was a much larger development of a Local Area Command and required the demolition of the current police station and two police houses.
“The TBRFG has been busy talking to the com-munity about the possibility of the NSW Police Force’s representatives UGL re-applying for the same development application on the same small block of land in the middle of the residential area in the coastal village of Kingscliff and we gained 1567 signatures on a petition to fight against this over-development.The petition was recently presented to Local Member Geoff Provest for tabling in NSW Parliament. The petition demonstrates the community’s anger and strong opposition to the location of an oversized Local Area Command in the middle of residential Kingscliff.
“We are encouraging our Local Member Geoff Provest and the NSW Government to find an alternate development site, especially given the recent Parsons report that made 22 recommendations in an audit of NSW Police, one of which was to change from a Local Area Command system to a larger District area and Patrol scheme, which would increase the current patrolled area three-fold.”
