SO, we have some interesting problems occurring very soon:
As I see it the pilots working for WY (PAS) will be on a higher rate than most directly employed police pilots. Under TUPE all pilots have the choice of going over on their present contract rates (salary + company car + health care +?) or accepting the new host rates? West Yorks are going to be presented with a real mess of a salary pot. Over a hundred pilots on different rates? A huge range of salaries for people doing the same thing! So where do they go from there?
I agree with SS, the real agenda here is to privatise police aviation. It is a decision the police will come to regret as they will lose all control over these resources and, when they expect a helicopter in minutes and it turns up after a multiple of minutes because of the upcoming centralised 'delay and dispatch' system, they will not be happy with the service -they will not get the results they have been getting and expecting. Those CC's will be under pressure from their new Crime Commissioners to get results - that will go up the ladder to NPAS....ouch.
From a purely selfish point of view I cannot wait to be integrated into a 'blue light' company running Police, SAR and Air Ambulance - the salaries of UK SAR pilots are well above those on police pay, and, no pressure - you just turn up eventually once the command system has given you the task. It's going to be a doodle, especially for observers, all the logs will state - 'nothing found returned to base'.
It just so happens that Winsor is going to help this by making it so unattractive for police officers to transfer that you will end up with NO observers whatsoever! Especially with the projected personal losses of these 'office workers'..And with the possibility of strikes coming up this is all going to be really, really messy.
