A VILLAGE police station is set to be sold as part of plans to save Essex Police up to £40 million.

Mistley Police Station, in New Road, will be placed on the open market in the coming days in a bid to make massive cuts.

In October last year proposals were announced to reduce the existing police estate from 80 to 30 buildings.

The buildings cost £10 million a year in running costs and need a fur ther £30 million of maintenance work to bring them up to standard.

Essex Police hope to use this money to fight and prevent crime more effectively.

Mistley Police Station was closed to the public in 2011, but officers still occasionally use the building as a base for operations.

Martin Rayner, chairman of Mistley Parish Council, said: “We will be writing to Chief Insp Russ Cole because he wrote to us saying the station hasn’t been in use as a base.

“We have no problem at all with the building now being sold, what we do have a problem with is the fact that there is no secure, safe space for the public to meet a police officer who polices locally without having to go to Colchester, Harwich or Clacton.

“We lack somewhere you can meet the police privately in a secure premises where your witness statement can be taken.

“We need a safe space, available 24/7, not the corner of a Co-op or the library, but a room or place where people can be accommodated and dealt with locally.”

Simon Curling, Essex Police’s head of operational estates, said: “The sale of these properties is part of our continuing programme to reduce the size of the current police estate, parts of which are ageing, under-used, in a bad state of repair and not fit for the purposes of modern policing."