UK SAR 2013 privatisation: the new thread

[SouthernExplorer]

Originally Posted by jimf671

There is no lack of deployment. Going back across 10 years of SK numbers, the two most relevant bases are doing 30% more jobs. They fly past my house on the way to Lochaber from Inverness. Aircrew joke about 'the Ben Nevis helicopter'. There is no point in bringing up ground clearance since nobody can change that. A new regime of any kind cannot magically create a modern helicopter with Wessex undercarriage. Anyway, I have hung off the sill of a Sea King at arms length and dropped onto rocky ground as it hovered at ten feet, so this is not new. The aircraft are as contracted for the carrying of a 'MRT Standard Load' (see Definitions, Sch 1.0, page 20) and that definition looks like much of it came from either Cairngorm or Lochaber.




Team member time? The capability and availability of these aircraft saves huge amounts of team member time by going in and picking up people without needing our participation. I can go back to my bed. Sometimes it swings the other way. It has always been thus.

As for saving the government money, this contract has been let on the basis of the £1.6bn being approximately 85% of the total costs and the rest is variable costs. This has deliberately been organised by MCA Aviation so that there is no financial incentive for the operator to restrict the service. Any restriction imposed by ARCC Fareham is for the purpose of maintaining the asset and ensuring that the next job and the job after that can also get done.

I note that they are trying to take aim at the DfT/MCA while cuddling up to the aircrew yet so much is at the Captain's discretion. This is not a good look.




He's doing his best to support those out on the ground. However, he's not on the end of the phone with ARCC Fareham understanding how his successors work and he's not organising helicopter training exercises under the new regime as I was just a couple of days ago.




Surely this can't be true? I heard them repeatedly strenuously deny it was about the money. Are you telling me that it really was about the money? They lied? I am shocked.

The Justice Department funding has been great. Most particularly, it has enabled teams operating in areas of low population with little fund-raising base to fund modern operations that ensure that anyone in distress in these areas is just as well served as someone in the honeypot areas. SMR continue to work with ScotGov on securing appropriate funding into the future. It is particularly impressive that whether it's the main grant money or the LIBOR fine money, SMR have ensured that the entire movement has had the chance to benefit whether they are doing one job a month or five jobs a month.



"They're aw oot o step but oor Jock."

Ground clearance is an issue limiting ops - the actual limitation is not the basic aircraft but the design additions in the choice of under slung toys. Similarly a vehicle that could only deploy 2 MRT members at a time was not the ideal to say the least.

Team member time is an ever impacting issue on the ability to deploy for MR activities. Broadly speaking there are 2 aspects to this. Firstly its the time away from the day job/family. The team members are volunteers doing this of their own volition in their spare time. We have had employers recently saying they can't have employees committed to further MR work. Even out of hours it affects work. Last night our team was alerted at 19:30, deployed around 22:00 and then retrieved at 3AM. Most team members then went to work this morning. Obviously this will have some effect on their work and their employers attitude too. Secondly a team member when deployed really has very limited time. Assuming they are working hard/moving over difficult ground then 6 hours is pushing the limit of what we'd anticipate them doing. In some cases they may be given a break and a chance to go out again, but normally unless their initial deployment is short then it isn't worth attempting to commit them to anything of much duration. So assuming a technical rescue takes some hours it may well be very desirable to retrieve the team by the most expedient method possible. There are also aspect that in remoter areas team members may be driving long distances in their own vehicles before and after deployment.

There has also been issues of MRTs being used to save the cost of using paid personnel. There have been recent flood cases when the FRS have called in MRTs (from out of area) rather than retained firefighters as they don't have to pay them. The 4 teams involved in the original issue split from SMR not so much as because they were "honeypot" areas - they split to concentrate on mountain rescue. With limited training hours in a year they decided to concentrate on core skills to make them more effective in the mountains rather than "Swift Water Rescue" - or sewage wading depending on your point of view.