HAMPSHIRE police bosses are going ahead with plans to sell off Tadley police station and to shut Basingstoke police station for more than a year to remove asbestos.

Members of Hampshire Police Authority agreed they needed to sell off a total of 40 premises – including 18 small stations – to stop cuts in frontline officers as the county constabulary struggles to save up to £50million over the next four years.

For Basingstoke police station (right), the closure – estimated to last 14 months – will be the second lengthy shutdown in just over a decade. The station was closed for 27 months between 1998 and 2001 so contractors could gut the building of its potentially deadly asbestos.

Police property managers will now have to come up with a temporary station for Basingstoke, but questions are being asked as to why the asbestos problem was not resolved during the previous closure.

The closure is unlikely to take place until a new custody centre has been built at Hook police station, which could take two or three years.

Chief Constable Alex Marshall told authority members that despite already having to make cuts of 400 posts in the last year, no frontline officers have been lost.

Mr Marshall also vowed that no station would close until an alternative had been found nearby such as a retained fire station or community building.

He said: “We are not moving out of any community. We will remain in every community. There will be a police presence.”

A report to the police authority said sales of the closing stations could bring in up to £30m.

The authority further decided that the current 14 custody centres will be streamlined down to six or seven, with four new ones to be built at Hook, Winchester, Fareham, and Newport between 2011 and 2014 to increase the number of cells from 140 to 190.

On plans for a new headquarters, authority members were not yet ready to confirm Winchester as the location for a new scaled-down base for 114 staff, as recommended by the chief constable.

A report on the location of the new core headquarters, which has an estimated cost of £4.4m, will come back to the police authority on September 27.