The GSD says that the under resourcing of the RGP is something which it has been “raising persistently.”

A statement continued: "The GSD notes the resourcing concerns raised by RGP Commissioner, Owain Richards, in his interview with GBC, which was aired on Viewpoint on 15 January. There have been similar concerns expressed by the previous Commissioner. The Commissioner’s comments, evidence that the position which the GSD have taken that the Government’s failure to provide further resources to the RGP has had and is having an impact on its operational effectiveness and efficiency, is accurate.”

Shadow for Justice, Joelle Ladislaus, said: “The RGP have been put under immense pressure in recent years to keep us safe and carry out their responsibilities with a significantly depleted workforce, very limited resources in a world where the nature of policing is rapidly changing, and all from a building that is falling to pieces and is unfit for the demands of modern-day policing. At the last general election this Government promised that they would provide the RGP with a new station and even went as far as to say that the designs had been agreed and signed off. However, when I asked for an update on that project in Parliament in December 2024, the Government had resiled from that election promise and instead said that the existing building at New Mole House, which was not built for purpose, would be refurbished. To date, there appears to have been little progress in that regard.

“In other questions in Parliament, we’ve sought to highlight how the Community Policing Team and the Drug Squad were disbanded because of a lack of resources, prompting a need for the Police to have to make a choice between different areas of policing, and impacting other areas negatively as a result. The Minister for Justice’s response to that, and to other difficult resourcing questions, has always been to deflect and point to operational independence as the reason behind the disbanding of those teams.

“Simply put, it is for the Commissioner of Police, along with the RGP’s Command Team to take operational decisions to keep Gibraltar safe, but it’s for the Government to provide the financing to put them in a position to succeed. The shortcomings in investment into policing have been obvious to the public, who have complained at length about the decrease in the presence of officers within our community in the past few years.

“Providing no increase in funding over the course of the past 5 years hinders the RGP’s capabilities and is just another example of a government that tells you what you want to hear but doesn’t follow through. A GSD Government would ensure we work with the RGP to provide further resources for its operational needs on a long-term basis.”