Southampton police station: Corrosion and flooding mentioned in report

A building report, obtained by the Daily Echo through a freedom of information request, shows that multiple issues were previously identified with the building's heating system. 

Since opening in 2011, several faults have been found in the system including accelerated pipework corrosion compared to the building's age.

Isolated flooding has also caused closures for short periods with "wider underperformance issues" leading to increased costs and increased risks of legionella bacteria. 

READ MORE: Police boss offers reassurance as Southampton police station to close

A total pipework replacement was succesfully carried out on the lower and upper ground floor area in 2018/19. 

But now the station is set to close again for works following a survey by GLD Design in November 2021. 

The report states: "By closing the building it allows the OPCC (Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner) and main contractor to systematically address the issues, instead of replacing pipework, fire alarms and the BMS sensors and then ‘effectively wiring and plumbing these new services back into a faulty or broken system.

"Closing the building also means a shorter works period, less disturbance for the users as they won’t be operating from an active construction site and only 1 large scale relocation compared to a minimum of 8 moves for varying lengths of time.

"From a health & safety, risk and information assurance perspective it isn’t appropriate that large-scale, pre-planned works are carried out in high-security areas.

"Concerns around risk to data, servers and sensitive policing can be removed entirely by vacating staff."

According to the report, the work required involves replacing "many metres of pipework, hundreds of valves, heating apparatus and possibly even a system wide reconfiguration".

No closure date has been set for the 36-cell Investigation Centre in Southern Road though work is expected to last four months. 

Police and Crime Commissioner, Donna Jones.

Police and Crime Commissioner, Donna Jones, previously reassured residents that the force will not be moving any critical police response out of Southampton.

The building services include an interconnected District Heating System (DHS), cold potable water, air handling units (AHUs) to provide heating and cooling to the floor plates, multiple Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS) and a generator to provide backup electricity in the event of a grid failure.

These run from the lower ground floor plant room to the roof on floor 7.