About 200 residents rallied outside the small police station in the dual coastal hamlets of Tea Gardens and Hawks Nest on Tuesday following rumours they could lose their station. 

The fears stemmed from a police re-engineering push announced last week that will include merging Port Stephens and parts of the existing Central Hunter command into the Port Stephens/Hunter policing district. 

Within the Port Stephens Local Area Command only the Raymond Terrace police station is manned 24 hours.

Smaller stations at Nelson Bay, Lemon Tree Passage, Karuah, Tea Gardens Hawks Nest and Dungog are not manned 24 hours.

Tea Gardens residents expressed concerns that a reallocation of resources could leave them drawing on nearby stations rather than having an officer on the ground. 

Tea Gardens resident Gordon Grainger said the closure of the town’s station had become a “pretty strong rumour” since the policing changes were announced last week. 

A NSW Police spokeswoman said there would be “no changes to our current service delivery” when asked if changes had been decided or considered for Tea Gardens. 

Port Stephens MP Kate Washington, who spoke at the rally on Tuesday afternoon, said she had assurances from police that existing infrastructure would remain, that the re-engineering process would to “flatten out” the management structure which would see “more police on the streets”.

But she there was a “fairly large vacuum of information” that made residents nervous about how it would be resourced. 

“There are concerns from across the electorate that satellite stations will be closed or left unmanned,” she said.

“Infrastructure is one thing, manning them at their current capacity is another.

“We’ve got at least 1400 residential lots that are in the pipeline [for the area], and that’s at least another 3000 residents.”

Ms Washington said the recent closure of the Clarence Town station, which remained “recent and raw”, meant residents wanted reassurances that no others would follow.