The point here is that there are no spare aircraft.
Althugh 'discarded' WMPs last aircraft quickly went off to do new work in Hertfordshire and same too with East Midland's 135T1. The latter is a 'time expired' UK police design even when G-SUFF and its ilk become available on replacement this year.
Yes you can back pedal onto a 355 but you will need to retrain most of your pilots. They long sice gave up keeping 355s current on their licence. And who really wants to retrain onto a type offering 20 minute duration again?
If only for Huntnhound, disregard the specifics of this case and Surrey if you will.
Yes you can rely on mutual support from your neighbours but the whole concept of that is that 'you' will be there for them when the time comes for them to be on maintenance. When an airframe is off line for a long time that system goes way off line. Lose 1,000 hours pa and try and divide it among the surrounding operations and it just will not work. Most operations cannot just leap from 1,000 hours pa to 1,350 just like that as a long term option even if the needy are paying the bill. And that disregards that transit times to the 'off-site' location will be up. Many calls will simply not be worth attending.
Long term [and not too long one might hope] there is a need for ACPO and the Home Office to seek to allocate spare aircraft for 'down time'. It is debatable whether one 900 and one 135 will be enough. Industry has no spare aircraft like they used to produce when there were relatively cheap 'simply equipped' police aircraft sitting at Macs or with PAS.
What is needed is debate but as we all know debate takes forever... regional police air resources have been on the table since 1963 - every time the guard changes so does the plan. There is a new plan but when will that see the light of day 11 months short of a General Election?
Meanwhile a temporary solution needs to be found that does not require a new police role equipped EC135P2 [unavailable] or an AS355F2 [almost pointless].
Perhaps in this time of commercial downturn it is back to basics with a 'leather seat' EC135?2 simply equipped with a turret and searchlight. Potentially the 'on the shelf' spare fleet could be just that, simply equipped SPIFR airframes that operations could use during all technical downtimes.
And before the broadsides start.... what alternatives are there in the market today?