The issue you are talking about certainly is fragmented. It is part of completely patchwork provision of aviation support to the emergency services in the UK.
No one seems to have mentioned police helicopters in connection with inland SAR (or at least the search part). A couple of observations:
Police helicopters are part of the police's provision for onshore SAR and spend an enormous amount of their time doing onland searches for various categories of people that the police want to find - very many of these are NOT criminals. There is much variation between forces and ASUs as to how they go about that - there is much variation in the way individual forces and ASUs operate.
Even though ASUs are part of the police, the problem of the lack of knowledge of police commanders about helicopter ops is common for us too. Sometimes they do not seem to want to know about helicopter issues. A very few ASUs place ASU personnel in C&C setups, which works well when it is done, but only the minority.
Historically, police ASUs have been pressed to stay out of the rescue element of SAR in any cases where winching would be the preferable method. There are a couple of cases where pilots involved have been warned when in extremis, they have used non-approved measures to rescue a person. However, at least one ASU, the Met, have apparently been provided with winches to hang off their shiny new EC145s. Presumably, the taxpayers' money has not been used simply for them to be expensive ornaments, although I do not believe there has been any indication of how they are planned to be used so far.
Incidentally, most police helicopters in coastal areas have both Tetra/Airwave and Marine VHF to talk to the CG. It does require separate systems, but it seems to be done without too much trouble. I won't expand on it here but the airborne use of Tetra is a nightmare and it is currently a horribly unreliable comms system.
We also have various little projects where helicopters have been trialled for use by fire and rescue services, but to date no permanent dedicated provision is provided for them. In some areas, police regularly provide assistance to fire services - in other areas such cross-service assistance is rare or non-existent. I am not sure that it would be possible to generate a satisfactory case for full-time separate air support for the F&R.
We also need to acknowledge the HEMS and air ambulance roles and the ad-hoc way that this also essential helicopter service is currently provided (or indeed NOT provided in some cases).
Helicopters are an expensive resource and even though many emergency service helicopters fly more than many commercial equivalents, they can fly more. My feeling is that the whole issue should be considered as a whole - holistically if you like that word.
There are some moves to gently nudge us away from the current piecemeal approach. The noises from the Home Office "centre" are towards regionalisation of police aviation and even a National Police Air Wing. I suspect there would be much objection to that from the individual Chief Officers, if it ever happens at all. In a similar way, cross-department joint use of heles is fraught with problems. Even in cases where it has happened successfully in the past (there are some really good examples of joint Police/HEMS heles in rural areas), they are now threatened by moves to separate and provide a worse service using more aircraft at greater cost.
UK-wide multi-use emergency service helicopter support seems like the obvious answer to me. It would involve different helicopters with differing sizes and capabilities, working across the emergency services. I doubt that there is the desire for such a system to occur amongst the decision-makers, despite the effectiveness and financial benefits which could be achieved. It would need different government departments at national and local level to work together and combine budgets.
Last edited by Helinut; 29th Jun 2007 at 20:59.
Reason: [Edited for typos]