Reading the PANews article and others related to it from NPAS spokesman, it occurred to me that a very important and fundamental fact had been lost in the implementation of the control of aircraft tasking.
The report refers to the borderless trial conducted by the east anglian consortium or Cambs, Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk (and Kent) that was designed to prove that NPAS was the way forward. The trial was actually a one month version (2 1/2 aircraft), followed a year later by a 3 month version (3 1/2 ac). Unfortunately the 3 month trial was blighted by the loss of one aircraft worth of duty time because of servicing and unserviceability.
The first trial was simple in that one TFO was acting as 'control' at one base, covering requests from 3 forces, this required no extra staff or management. the aircraft would respond on a common talkgroup to requests from any of the 3 forces, often agreeing between aircraft things such as remaining endurance, closest to the job factoring in wind etc. The controlling TFO listened to the talkgroup and acted as the hub of the whole operation and referee. A very simple method of control allowing flexibility, expert opinion, and very fast response, such as " police 13 don't lift for that we're just finished here and will be there in 10 minutes and you're 15 minutes away". True borderless tasking.
The second trial expanded the area to 5 forces and included Kent (no aircraft) setting up a sub control room (with TFO supervision at the start)
Each force was required to provide tasking to the control room via email/fax/telephone, the control room them emailed/telephoned/radio'd a unit to task an aircraft. Lines were drawn on a map to decide on 50/50 situations rather than county boundaries. The trial highlighted difficulties with comms and the fact that the busy counties could very quickly suck the whole effort into one corner of the 5 county area. The deployment of aircraft required the crew to land at the nearest ASU base after the task to save transit time ( a sort of Russian Roulette of were's the next task coming from), so very quickly aircraft ended up 'out of position', unable to perform post task admin until returning to home base at the end of the shift. The implementation of PAS not only removed aircraft from service, it removed crucial bases with fuel, thereby negating the proven principle of saving on transit time and fuel/flight servicing time (aircraft hours). The method of control has lost the flexible principle of the first trial and I suggest the confidence of the police officers at large. Most NPAS aircraft in regions that have lost aircraft and bases now have a bigger 'transit to on job flying hours ratio', and to make it worse, have to go all the way back to home base to get fuel before being ready for further tasking