A senior council chief has slammed a decision to scrap a police station, arguing the community it serves pays more than enough to keep it open.
North Wales Police announced last month that it was no longer viable to spend £7,500 a year on running the Benllech station.
But Cllr Ieuan Williams said people in Benllech and surrounding areas of Pentraeth, Moelfre and Llaneugrad pay around £1m a year towards North Wales Police in levies on their council tax.
He said it was out of order than the force couldn't spend some of that on providing a station and a PCSO to the area, especially considering it was becoming an ever more popular holiday destination.
Cllr Williams said: "With the starting salary for a PCSO being £23,503, I take it that the upper salary is no more than £30,000.
“Taking into account an on-cost of £38,100, this still represents only 4% of what the community contributes to the service.
“With that taken into account, isn’t it fair and proper that the area is provided with full community policing considering our contribution? I would argue that it would.”
The PCSO who had worked at the station has recently been reassigned to Llangefni.
Cllr Williams added: "I believe that a building, which isn’t being used at present, and community policing go hand in hand.
“This is the third biggest settlement after Holyhead and Llangefni and in my view, this needs to be taken into consideration.
“On its website North Wales Police claims that 11 PCSO’s operate on the island but I haven’t seen any recently.”
North Wales Police has been approached to comment, but in a letter to the island’s MS last month, Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones stated that there hasn’t been a public enquiry counter service at the station for a “significant number of years,” with plans to reinvest the income from its sale into the force’s estate.
Noting that policing has “changed dramatically” over recent years, he added: “Officers are no longer sitting in conventional offices in police stations dealing with conventional crime.
“More and more officers need digital skills and equipment to enable them to provide a high quality service to the public. We need to keep pace with the digital revolution.
“North Wales Police has invested in an ambitious transformative digital programme of work which seeks to provide officers with the equipment they need to work in this digital context in a truly flexible and agile manner.
“Not only does this help to ensure that we continue to meet the expectations of the public and keep them safe from harm as a result of the ever increasing cyber threats, it also enables officers to remain visible within their communities.
“This has huge benefits in improving community engagement both within our densely populated urban areas, as well as our harder to reach rural communities.
“The intention is to decommission the station on 30th September 2020 and then place the building on the open market very soon afterwards.”
