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Tauranga's central police station has become a victim of the region's rapid growth.
Acting area commander Inspector Bob Burns said the offices had become so cramped that police national headquarters were considering rebuilding the station on the same site or moving elsewhere in the central business district.
In the meantime, police are converting storage rooms to office space and reshuffling staff to make room.
Mr Burns said stations at Katikati, Te Puke and Greerton were also too small.
"As we get more and more staff, those [stations] are going to get tighter and tighter and those space issue options are being looked at. They're not for us to decide.
"There's a lot of extra staff coming and we've got to accommodate them somewhere.
"The majority of them don't work in the station, they work outside of the station, but unfortunately they've got to have locker space, they need access to computers and things like that and that requires space."
Western Bay Police Association spokesman Mel Ridley said working in "antiquated" conditions was hard for police, who were even stuck for locker room space despite being forced to carry much more equipment than before.
"It's at the stage where it's close to dysfunctional. They were making plans in 1990 to move it so why we're still here in 2006, I don't know.
"It's diabolical, really. It was designed in the 1950s for probably a quarter of the staff who are housed in it."
- BAY OF PLENTY TIMES
