There has been a call for a proper development plan to be put in place for a former rural police station.

SDLP East Derry candidate Cllr Thomas Conway has asked for the site of Claudy police station to be redeveloped in consultation with the community.

"The station closed more than a year ago as part of the PSNI rationalisation plan. We in the SDLP took the view that policing was not just about bricks and mortar, it was about officers on the ground.

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"At a recent District Policing Partnership meeting we were promised additional policing resources and we are generally satisfied with that," he said.

"But the station is still sitting there, bricked up, like Colditz at the top of the town. Now a planning application has come in for relocation of the telecommunications mast, which carries commercial signal equipment, from the front to the back of the site.

"This indicates to me that there is no overall plan for disposal and/or development of the site and that is not satisfactory.

"The police station was a community facility and the community should be consulted on what should replace it," he insisted, this week.

(BMcC/GK)