Updated
The Queensland Police Union (QPU) has concerns with the size of police regions in state's central and southern regions.
Queensland Police Commissioner Ian Stewart yesterday confirmed a restructure of the service, with up to 110 commissioned officers and around 200 other staff to be offered redundancies.
The state's eight police regions will be cut to five and districts reduced from 31 to 15.
The new Southern Region will extend north to include Winton, west to the Northern Territory border, south to the New South Wales border and as far east as Toowoomba.
The six police districts, Charleville, Roma, Dalby, Warwick, Toowoomba and Ipswich, will merge into two.
The Maroochydore regional office will not exist after June and will become part of a central police region that includes Mackay, Rockhampton, Bundaberg and the Sunshine Coast.
The new structure will be in place by July 1.
'Huge' regions
QPU spokesman Denis Sycz says the new regions are huge and is not sure if it will work.
"I've got concerns about the whole thing because there's no detail in how they're going to implement these changes," he said.
"We don't want to see service delivery suffer, we don't' want to see our people being moved without any consultation.
"There's a whole lot of concerns that we are going to be in negotiations with the service about and hopefully they'll listen to us and take those concerns on board."
Maranoa Mayor Robert Loughnan, in the state's south-west, says the scale of the restructure is concerning.
Councillor Loughnan says he wants more information about how it will be managed.
"Certainly be trying to talk to the Commissioner at some point about this and just seeing if there is another way," he said.
"This police district then would take in almost from the Sunshine Coast, right around south-west Queensland and all the way up to almost Mount Isa.
"It just seems an awfully large area to try to combine into one police district and I've got real concerns about that."
Logistics worries
He says he is worried about the logistics involved in the restructure.
"Any sort of restructure that combines almost six police entire police districts into one is filled with danger, particularly in such a large area," he said.
"The geography of south-west Queensland in particular will make this a pretty difficult thing to achieve and I just need to know how it's going to be managed before I can accept it outright."
Meanwhile, Opposition police spokesman Bill Byrne has questioned why Police Minister Jack Dempsey and Cabinet do not appear to be involved in decisions on the restructure.
"We saw the Police Commissioner standing by himself, while the Minister apparently remains on leave, making quite substantial statements about what was going on with the structure of Queensland Police Service," he said.
"I would have thought that the reduction in the number of regions would certainly be a matter that should have been briefed to the Minister and if not the Cabinet."
The new structure will be in place by July 1.
Topics: police, community-development, public-sector, local-government, activism-and-lobbying, regional, charleville-4470, dalby-4405, ipswich-4305, warwick-4370, longreach-4730, bundaberg-4670, maroochydore-4558, rockhampton-4700, toowoomba-4350
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