Port of Dover Police
| Port of Dover Police | |
|---|---|
Badge of the Port of Dover Police
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| Agency overview | |
| Formed | 1933 |
| Legal personality | Non government: Privately funded police service |
| Jurisdictional structure | |
| Operations jurisdiction* | Port area of Dover Harbour Board in the country of England, UK |
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| Location of Port of Dover | |
| Size | 8 km2 |
| Population | Nil - (16 million passengers per year + port staff) |
| Legal jurisdiction | Land & Property belonging to Dover Harbour Board and up to 1-mile (1.6 km) from same |
| Governing body | Dover Harbour Board |
| Constituting instrument | Dover Harbour Consolidation Act 1954 |
| General nature | |
| Operational structure | |
| Headquarters | Police Station, Eastern Docks, Dover. CT16 1JA. |
| Constables | 46 |
| Civilians | 8 |
| Agency executive | Paul Wilczek, Superintendent (Chief Officer) |
| Facilities | |
| Stations | 2 |
| Boats | 1 |
| Website | |
| Website | |
| Footnotes | |
| * Divisional agency: Division of the country, over which the agency has usual operational jurisdiction. | |
The Port of Dover Police (PoDP) is a non-Home Office police service which provides a 24-hour policing service to the Port of Dover, Kent, England.
The PoDP is established, funded and maintained by the owners of the Port of Dover, the Dover Harbour Board, the statutory undertakers.
The force is maintained under the Dover Harbour Consolidation Act 1954, which incorporates section 79 of the Harbours, Docks, and Piers Clauses Act 1847. Section 79 provides that the Harbour Board may nominate people to be special constables, who are then sworn in by a justice of the peace. Such constables have, by virtue of the 1847 Act, jurisdiction on land owned by the Harbour Board and anywhere within a one-mile radius of such land.
In purely legal terms, the DHB owns significant areas of land on the sea front of Dover together with the ferry and cruise terminals. The authority also owns land in an area known as ‘Port Zone’ in the Whitfield area to the north of the town. Combined, this land ownership effectively gives the PoDP jurisdiction throughout Dover, but in practical terms the policing activities of the PoDP are directed at the Eastern and Western Dock Terminals and the public promenade located between the two terminals.
As the PoDP does not have its own custody facilities, the practice had been that people who had been arrested were taken to Kent Police's Dover police station. However when the custody suite there closed in November 2011, PoDP officers would have instead been required to take arrestees to Canterbury, Folkestone or Margate police stations, but the force received a legal opinion stating that this would be unlawful as this would put them outside the one mile limit of their jurisdiction. A short term measure had to be introduced whereby suspects were arrested by officers from Kent Police Special Branch and transport them to a suitable police station on behalf of PoDP. This problem was resolved when the Marine Navigation Act 2013 was introduced in early 2014, allowing the jurisdiction of port police officers to extend to the police area in which they are located where the chief officer of the local police force consents.
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Wikipedia