HARROW on the Hill's Victorian former police station is an "ideal" property to become offices for the nearby John Lyon School, planners have been told.
The Harrow Foundation is the previously undisclosed buyer of the building at 76 West Street that was constructed in 1873 and locally listed, and was sold at auction in February by the Metropolitan Police Authority.
It did not have a front counter but used to house several police teams, including the Greenhill and Harrow on the Hill Safer Neighbourhood Teams, until their relocation to a new base at Kirkland House in Peterborough Road, Harrow, in 2009, and has stood vacant since.
The John Lyon School, an independent boys' day school in Middle Road run by the same Harrow Foundation which oversees Harrow School, has applied to Harrow Council to change the use of the premises from a police station to provide bursary and administrative accommodation.
It says in its design and access statement that the building is "of ideal location and size" for this and that it would relocate work and staff currently located in rented offices in Byron Hill Road and would require no external alterations.
If granted permission, the school would carry out the conversion in January 2012 and would return the original blue police lantern outside that had been removed.
n What do you think? E-mail chief reporter Ian Proctor at ianproctor@trinitysouth.co.uk
