Mr Davies clearly doesn't understand the concept that 'no lesser service' implies when considering the new contract post 2012.
There is no way, even with the fastest helicopters in the world that you can meet, let alone exceed present or historical concurrency and surge incident levels at night with fewer bases. Once the aircraft from either Culdrose or Valley is tasked to an incident there is now no overlap cover or ability to manage concurrent SAROps for a huge area of the W of England and Wales.
For some reason Chivenor has been the target of several attempts to prove SAR bases can be reduced which, when you consider the size of our patch and the number of jobs we do (over 200 so far this year) is rather ridiculous and a good proportion of them are at night.
When you also consider how busy the flights at Valley and Culdrose are (also at night), how are they going to mop up the extra tasking from Devon, North Cornwall and S Wales without someone losing out and not getting a helicopter when they need it.
All the analysis of response times, range and job frequency conveniently ignores the fact that the W coast of UK is a busy place in terms of maritime, coastal and mountain activity and 2 aircraft at night for the whole area is not enough, especially as there is no second standby aircraft in the new contract.
The ability to use a SAR helicopter for a nighttime medtransfer (relatively common) to specialist hospitals in London and the Midlands would denude huge areas of UK if we are down to 9 bases an mean that those requests would simply have to be turned down or risk leaving massive holes in SAR cover.
This letter is, I suspect, a precursor to the SARH announcement and discussions with probably the cheapest bidder because both consortia have expressed concerns that the contract can't be achieved within the prescribed budget. All the worries that this whole process would produce a less capable and profit-driven service are coming to pass
All UK SAR needs is some new aircraft, not a huge new empire and a £5BN contract but the politicians and the MoD leadership can't or won't see this. In the face of present public spending defecits how on earth can you justify £5Bn for less aircraft and poorer cover?
It is like suggesting that having fewer but faster ambulances or fewer but fitter policemen will improve NHS service or reduce crime rates and giving the taxpayer an even bigger bill to deal with - frankly it's criminal.
And finally, having just had an early call-in because the overnight crew have done nearly 7 hours of night SAROPs, I think the minister really ought to look carefully at what he is suggesting.
And having gone through the job book this mornin, 45 of our jobs since Jan 1 09 have been at night after 2100 - who will be doing those then?