Hain pressed for more money for police-training college

Northern Secretary Peter Hain will tonight face demands to stump up another £40m (€59.2m) needed to build the North’s new state-of-the-art police college.

Members of the North’s Policing Board, who have become increasingly frustrated by British government resistance to their request for the extra cash needed to locate the academy in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, are to press him for commitments when they meet in Belfast.

With any completion date already slipping back to 2010, fears are growing that the £130m (€192.4m) blueprint may be scrapped and alternative plans such as disused military bases explored instead.

But the board, which unanimously backed Cookstown from a list of 26 potential sites, is insistent that the college will not go anywhere else.

“Peter Hain will be asked to honour the government’s pledge to come up with the full funding,” a board source said.

With devolution talks set to get underway in St Andrews, Scotland, tomorrow, the Northern Secretary is also expected to be challenged on how any transition of policing and justice powers from Westminster to Stormont would impact on the board.

It is his first formal meeting with the authority since it was reconstituted in April.

Their discussions are also likely to focus on the British government’s latest position on restorative justice schemes and the transfer of national security.