THAMES Valley Police says that axing Oxford’s custody cells and moving the entire suite to Abingdon will “improve efficiency”.

But officers have admitted transport issues have to be resolved as they could end up “shuttling” the city’s troublemakers back and forth along the A34 during busy nights.

The Oxford Mail revealed on Wednesday that the force was to shut the 17 cells and booking area at St Aldate’s.

They said to bring the custody suite up to modern standards would cost £2.5m.

With 30 cells already in place in Abingdon, the force has taken the decision to close the custody suite in October.

Local Area Commander for Oxford, Supt Christian Bunt, said: “We will not be policing any differently, people will still get arrested and they will still get taken to custody.

“What my inspectors will have to do is work hard to manage the distractions and make full use of all resources we have on duty.

“We are going to be shuttling people out. The thing we have to put the most planning into is our night-time operation because of the volume of prisoners we get.

“We do get a larger volume of prisoners in a small amount of time there, and will need to put measures in place to make sure we are shuttling prisoners over so we aren’t losing officers from the city.

“It may mean making better use of our special constabulary and looking at our minimum staffing levels at those key times and asking if we need to increase them.

He added: “Because Oxford has one custody sergeant it gets full very quickly and we end up taking prisoners to Abingdon in any case.

“The biggest issue is making sure we have mitigations in place to manage getting the prisoners from A to B.”

Supt Bunt said that during busy periods at weekends the Oxford custody suite struggled to cope with demand.

Thames Valley Police custody head Chief Inspector Dave Cherrington, said: “Although there may be travel time, we will be dealing with people far more efficiently.”

He said the force were not obliged to take prisoners back to Oxford if they had been released without charge.

Chief Insp Cherrington added: “All sergeants risk assess prisoners around their release, there is no black and white around that and it is dealt with on an individual case-by-case basis.”

The Oxford station at St Aldate’s is thought to be one of the only in the country with cells on its top floor.

Supt Bunt added: “They are on the top floor of the building, which is unusual.

“This is an old police station and custody facilities have moved on.

“Abingdon custody is a purpose-built modern custody facility that has more than sufficient capacity.

“We are putting in plans in Oxford to make sure we can minimise the impact of officers here in Oxford having to go over to Abingdon.”