Originally Posted by
MAN777
NPAS was sold to me years ago as an organisation that could pool training, staff, equipment and have more purchasing power. The goal being to make air support more efficient, save costs and provide a better service to the Police forces around the country. It appears to have failed on the majority of these goals.
Put an end to this organisation and give control back to the actual users, bring the birds home.
A repeated opinion over the past 9 years - "it was better when forces had their own aircraft". One question that springs from this though is which forces would actually be able to afford having their own aircraft again? Apart from the Met, GMP and West Mids, who out of those 32 / 33 Forces who had ASUs would fund it now. NPAS gets a lot of negative press but at least there is still a service to the vast majority of forces. I think without NPAS warts and all, the reality is the majority of ASUs would have been closed by chief constables and aircraft sold by now.