THE decision to close the custody suite at St Helens Police station leaves a lot of questions that need to be answered.

The news filtered out at a safer communities scrutiny panel of St Helens Council on Tuesday that the Star was present at (see report on page 2).

There had been some doubts over the future of the holding cells due to IT problems which had led to the unit on College Street being closed.

But the decision to wield the axe of a facility, which is around 15 years old, appears to have been taken without any open public consultation or scrutiny.

Make no mistake, closures like these are blows to St Helens. We’ve already lost the magistrates court, meaning local justice is delivered in Liverpool. Now the town is losing another significant resource.

This is a big borough, which has boundaries spreading from Newton-le-Willows to Rainhill. The adult population is more than 170,000.

Yet we are having facilities stripped away – are officers going to be driving arrested people to cells in Liverpool or Wirral? And how much time will that take up for already overstretched police?

Yes, it is a consequence of government cuts, but these decisions are made at a regional level.

No wonder some Star readers are suspicious that the town and its identity could be threatened by regionalisation.