Now steady on!
Perhaps using Dyfed-Powys is a bad example especially on the grounds of actual 24/7 availability of that unit.
OK this time they were available but the main reason that NPAS managed to get a toe hold into this business was that there were too many inconsistencies in the set up..... nearly everything that existed until last year was not planned it 'happened' and it was those chinks in the armour that gave the NPAS team a reason to exist and modify.
If every element of the air support system was well thought through in the beginning and not wasteful there would have been less grounds for what just happened.
From Day 1....... and I guess we can go back to 1934 here..... Police Air Support was some Chief Constables whim..... in 1934 it was Trenchard and the CC of Leicester [name escapes me, Lynch-Blosse was it?] .... in 1995 it was Ray White of Dyfed [and others].... each with their 'toy' that grew up [or not]. That is why some units could not actually prove a right to survive and why some were miles off 24/7 availability in their county, or needed an ambulance to give them a reason to live and breath, and in some few cases hover on the verge of financial troubles in a time of cut cut cut .... that is until the new call to arms was declared and led to the various Police Authorities wanting to stand shoulder to shoulder against losing their badged aircraft.
But how long would it have lasted beyond November? NPAS has been brewing for 6 years and yet it still survived in the face of an apparent horde of enemies.
Maybe, perhaps, no one would have truly analysed reasons to do without police air support [and its very easy to find reasons in England and Wales with fog, rain and engineering downtime to prove you CAN do police work without it] but if it had collapsed here and there your 20 minute rule would have meant nothing.... a hole in coverage would be just that, a yawning gap along county lines. Hampshire was an example..... the first to die on the NPAS altar.
Its only a personal opinion based upon looking in from the sidelines and listening to everyones opinion but I think as a best job of a difficult situation NPAS may be the devil but there may well have been worse alternatives.