Pursuit. What's a pursuit? Oh yes, I vaguely remember one of those back in the old days. :(

Gem, stick around, they're due to make a comeback.

Well one could argue that a chief constable, whether they are/were ACPO lead on air support or not, may or may not be the right person to set up a national air support organisation..
One wonders what involvement/knowledge a busy Chief Constable could actually gain in the day to day workings of a busy ASU. I wonder how many hours he's flown as a pax..?
But thats probably a discussion for another thread..

Is there any truth to the rumours that there are are ASUs in the country that cannot self deploy..? Where is the lowest annual hour unit in the country.?

But the main question I suppose, in places like NWAOG, is.. is the prisoner count down, and is the number of pursuits arrived at down..?

Wrong about Liverpool pursuits! They will soon be known as "just let them go's"

Bob Ruprecht set up Hampshire ASU on a Cessna single in 1979 and it migrated to the Optica by 1985. That type let them down in a fatal accident over Ringwood and they shut down for a year or so as a result.
The Optica came back but the engineering again let it down when the fan failed.

You can blame the unit for being a bit gullible on the Optica but it did what it was designed to do...... provide VFR daylight observation on limited funds. It was a bit of a flyingclub throughout [but the Met and others were guilty of that into the 1990s] but it was a money thing.

When it came to the cuts Hampshire was an easy target, low key, low funding and an aircraft that represented poor value for money [low availability, regular problems with the engines, long maintenance periods] it was an easy 'Grand Gesture' for Alex Marshall to make that saved very little real cash. Add to that the retirement of Bob Ruprecht and all the right boxes were ticked.

It may be said that a similar process is forming over whether the Surrey or Sussex helicopter is to go.

Morris,

You have as much chance of getting those prisoner figures, as I do of autorotating onto Tranquility Base. :} They used to be displayed on the walls of most Unit bases, but I bet most are no longer posted where there have been changes.

My candidate for lowest hours flown would be Dyfed-Powys, but those Units competing for that prize will be shy to publicise their figures, I suspect.

PANews,

I had wondered which way that "contest" would go. There will be a host of pressures being applied to the decision, perhaps even some from the local air ambulance setup. Presumably the Sussex cab is a lot older than the Surrey one, but I don't know how the flying hours play. Pilots: Sussex D/E, Surrey contractors. If it is to be Redhill, then some of the Sussex pilots/observers may be reluctant to re-locate. [All speculation, I acknowledge, but this is a rumour network]

Helinut, Just to correct you Hampshire ASU has never operated out of Fairoaks, the ASU was based at Lee on Solent (Daedalus) for a number of years with the plank.

It was Surrey who were forced to move from Fairoaks to Odiham because of the continuing threat to the heli.

I would suggest that if you ask any of the Hampshire troops on the ground today they would welcome the Plank back.

Well, I've certainly been involved in far fewer prisoners since last July than in a similar period of time prior to that. And I'm not the only one. Less incidents attended = less prisoners.

Hi Gem, apart from not being as busy, you and the troops all doing OK?

Same old, same old Tom. We're still quite busy, just mainly duff jobs.

ahb,

I believe what I wrote was that Surrey AOU and its helicopter was at Fairoaks (in Surrey), before it moved to Odiham (in Hampshire). That is certainly what I meant, and is certainly what happened.

Looks like the "forced" collaboration order has just gone through a couple of days ago. (No turning back now as if they were ever going to)

The Police (Collaboration: Specified Function) Order 2012

And if anyone is interested in what was said when the committee debated it:

Draft Police (Collaboration: Specified Function) Order 2012

As Plymouth is about 20mins flying time from the most South West unit at Exeter, the whole of Cornwall is outside the 20min flying time.

Cornwall - 1,376 sq miles
England & Wales - 58,368 sq miles

There's 2.358% in one fell swoop! Add in the South East coast, West Wales, Herts & Beds, etc.... 'pants on fire' :p

Ah Silsoe. I think that will mean 97% of the population, not 97% of the geographical area, but you knew that anyway, didn't you?

NPAS Speak = "NPAS is already demonstrating some of the predicted cost savings !"

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...conuttySad.jpg

NPAS Message translated into English

Successfully apprehending, prosecuting and sentencing criminals is expensive. We can do less of it and thereby save money, which is obviously a good thing! :rolleyes:

NPAS spin.
 

Nick Herbert. (policing minister)
"As has been suggested, the authority’s concern was that response times to incidents in much of south Yorkshire would have been longer under the original NPAS proposals. Set against that, however, the hours available for air support coverage would have increased and the NPAS would have provided cover for periods when aircraft were undergoing maintenance. The local solution is preferred by the force and it is a good route forward. "

I recall the police authority chairman saying "we've a gun to our head so we have no choice".!

The Yorkshire ASU mutual aid set up ALREADY provides cover 24/7 for all 3 members AND cover during maintenance.

SYP have gained nothing by joining NPAS except an extra £6000per year to pay, over and above their existing budget, for the privilege of losing half their operating hours and half their staff...

Spin spin and more spin.
It was their choice. They could have saved the extra money which I think was a little more than 6k.

That may be the thought, but he didn't say that did he!
Smoke and mirrors, smoke & mirrors :suspect:



England pop 2001 census 49,138,831
Wales pop 2001 census 2,903,085
Total UK population covered by NPAS = 52,041,916

97% = 50,480,658

So the equivalent of roughly the whole population of Wales, not being covered by air support is, in the Ministers eyes alright then :rolleyes:

Like most single targets generated by politicians concerning service targets it is essentially meaningless.

Its the same as the 8 minute target for 999 ambulance arrivals or the 4 hr dwell time in A&E. It has no decent logical basis and once it exists it becomes the only goal. People will now be employed to make sure that the stats show it is fulfilled (not by manning aircraft but by fiddling with the stats before they are issued). It is the same thing with target crimes. Once they exist, detectives are formed into small admin teams who spend their days in an office massaging stats and crime reports so that burglaries (or whatever) magically become criminal damage.

Sorry for the rant. I feel better now.

But know one ever asks those who do the job what are sensible targets.

Silsoe. Now go and google the population numbers for N Yorks, Cumbria and Lincolnshire, counties currently without dedicated air support. The figure is not far off your 3%. Add the far end of Cornwall and those remote bits of Wales and even (dare I say), Kent where one might be able to say air support will take longer than 20 mins and at the worst NPAS can say there is no change.....

Helinut, I heard recently about a great example of this manipulation.

A very senior officer was inspecting a division and the force concerned have a way of grading performance based on the percentage of crimes cleared up. Less than 75% and you get an Amber, more than 75% you get a green, less than 50% is a red. One div commander is unable to beat 66% as he's only had three racially motivated crimes in the last period and charged people with two of them.

No amount of pleading with the VSO would make them see sense on this. The division failed as they were not achieving at least a 75% clear up rate.

So....he either has a failure on his record or he gets a guy to go out and "create" a racially motivated crime that they can "solve" to balance the books.

VSO is ONLY interested in the stats.

Handysnaks, take a look here post 128 for a copy of the 20 minute circles map posted by Coconutty. A fair bit of the counties you mentioned are covered within those circles. Very difficult to work out numbers unless you plot every town on the map and look up its figures, the big chunks of Wales and North Yorkshire hardly have any population in them.

Love it or hate it, NPAS is here to stay. We just have to live with it. Could be worse, they could have gone for the nine base model or chopped ASU all together.:sad:

The most recent example I came across is not in police aviation, but I hope you will allow me a minor digression.

At several local hospitals, when A&E gets busy and dwell times approach the 4 hour target, they prevent ambulances from delivering patients to the A&E. Because the A&E 4hr dwell time target only starts when the patient crosses the threshold, the hospital makes the ambulances park up in the car park and then wait to be called in by A&E.

And do the managers of the ambulance trust or the hospital complain about this abuse? Not at all. As long as the ambulance trust passes its 8 minute target for 999 arrivals and the A&E 4hr dwell time is passed everything is just great :mad:

WF, I am sure you are right really. It is just that I get mad at the hypocrisy when the proponents say it will be more efficient and effective (i.e. better).

If they just said we are doing it to save money that would be fine. However, it won't save money and it will also be worse.

Wagging Finger. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. What's more I'm not sure that you grasped the point I was trying to make! However, I am sure that Sid knows the point I was trying to make. So, point made!!

:D:D

Point well made, whatever point it was in the first place, is there a point to all this?

Handy, nope, not quite sure what point you're trying to make, but if it's the point that N.Yorks, Cumbria and Linclonshire will now be covered by the 20 minuters, whereas before they weren't, that isn't only incorrect but it also isn't quite the point of the new NPAS (NNPAS) is it? (savings not being the point anymore!)

Previously the counties could have asked for mutual aid from a force with air support and the reaction time then would have been exactly the same as it is now and will be in the future. No bases are being created to give a closer more rapid service to these counties are there? Therefore, no efficiency increase.

How much would/does a mutual aid task cost be per hour? How much will these counties be paying into NNPAS for 365/24/7 cover? Will these forces be calling air support purely to get their moneys worth, because whereas before they paid nothing for air support, now they will be and they must have to justify the expenditure to the taxpayer.

"Dear Cumbrian taxpayer,
Your Council Tax Police Force contributions never used to pay for air support cover. In the future, they will be regardless if an aircraft is used or not. Shouldn't you now be asking the authorities how things have changed so much for the worse and why they now believe that your county has the need for air support, when in the past they didn't " :rolleyes:


As for the figures asked for earlier;

N.Yorkshire 599,700
Cumbria 496,200
Lincolnshire 584,538
Total = 1,680,438


Looking at coconutty's previous map post, Cumbria still isn't covered in 20 mins, so thanks for highlighting that the hugely popular counties of Cornwall and Cumbria, (the populations of which increase immensely during holiday periods), equate to at least 1% of the (normal) population that aren't within 20 mins.

For example, in one town alone, "Around 22,000 people live in Newquay, but the population can increase to 100,000 or more in the summer."
...and for the Lake District, "on average per year about 15.5 million people arrive here".

Considering mispers is a huge chunk of Police Aviation tasking, isn't this a bit of an oversight by the 'suits' at NNPAS?

Ah Sid, My point is that the statistics you used to try and make your point referred to surface area rather than population!

So based on

I assume that you regard covering the whole of the geographical area of England and Wales as crucial.

Now the ministers quote certainly didn't say that he was talking about population. However, it didn't say he wasn't. You inferred that he was talking about area rather than population!

Now regarding this point

I supect (if he thought about it at all), he would think that as that is about what we have at the moment then 'no problemo'!

Finally, regarding the population increase of Newquay and the Lake District over the summer. Why is it an oversight of the 'Suits' at NPAS. Surely if anything, it is an oversight of the 'Suits' at D & C or Cumbria to have had this situation going on for years now but not to have purchased another helicopter (or Aeroplane) to address it? On the other hand, maybe it is an indication that policing in the UK can take place without the need for as much air support as we have at the moment. In which case.........:p

I lied about the finally.....
I'm bored :bored: now so I wouldn't put too much work into your reply as I don't think I can muster the enthusiasm for another considered reply! :ok:

That'll be because;
You got my point then. If the figures don't fit one, the statement meant the other :ok:


Regarding the summer population increase, I was under the impression it was NNPAS that were doing the great shake up of UK Police Aviation to provide a more effective service. D&C temporarily moved the ac for a reason. Unfortunately, if that was to happen now, theres a huge '20 min' gap in the plan between Dartmouth and Portland.

As I say. it's a shame after the time and money spent on the October plan, that there was this little oversight of 15 million visitors into an area with no air support closer than 20 minutes away, and still no coverage at all of a county that sees its towns increase in population by up to 355% !!! Perhaps this was all taken into consideration during all those investigative visits by NNPAS in the formative years, and if so I'll listen to whatever reasoning is behind it. What do you mean....what visits !!!!!

As a final finally;
 

They say that if the cap fits wear it;

Unfortunately, there will always be someone around to tell you that the cap fits perfectly....

...http://www.jpopasia.com/img/album-co...61-97-l6ye.jpg

Just to clear that 97% issue up
 

Handy, as you are bored, just for you I put "Nick Herbert 97%" into google and found;

Police Grant Debate · Media Centre · Nick Herbert
So there you go. You are correct.
If that was your post, all that I would be able to add would be...

....as long as that 97% of the population wasn't either on holiday or temporarily relocated due to the tourism industry :ok:

Without dragging this OT, our Telstra have used this ploy for many years: they currently claim to provide mobile service to 96% of the Australian population, yet a quick look at their coverage map shows <20% of the actual land mass having Telstra cellular connection :hmm:

OK if everyone stays at home, of course......

The saving "on paper" was £600,000 per year, minus staff costs and the capital grant from the home office. Which comes about £250-£300k
On its own sounds worth doing. Even tho it means losing their own a/c, and "native" air cover.
Then you look at the SYP budget of £256,000,000 per year.
And the saving equates to 0.01% of the annual budget.
Zero point zero one percent of the budget saving.
Maybe that's why their police authority coughed at handing over their a/c for nothing and losing their own unit..

And before you look at how much that £300k saving may be still worth doing. Look at the overtime bill for CID..

A saving is a saving.
 

Sadly Morris1 a saving is a saving. If I could save on my outgoings at home I would. Even 0.01%!
The old saying of 'look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves' springs to mind.
Policing existed before Air Support, it exists where currently there is no Air Support and it exists when the weather precludes there being any Air Support.

Sadly, Air Support falls in the 'nice to have' column, although many on here think that society will fall appart and chaos reign without Air Support.

Time to wake up an smell the coffee.

:=

That's all very well on paper wagging finger. But it isn't a level playing field and some departments have been deemed so important as to be ring fenced from cuts.
The extremely small saving to the budgets of these forces that NPAS pretends to offer, is far outweighed by the impact of removing a/c from service.
Go to merseyside and ask the cops there how often a "visiting" a/c are actually catching baddies and dropping on pursuits..!
The "pennies make pounds" statements is what politicians use. Just before they go and blow 10 times that saving on some other scheme.
We're all in it together remember.
Some more so than others.
NPAS is just another ineffective cost cutting exercise destroying the hard work done over the previous decades.

Oh woe is me! Other departments are getting treated better than us, thats like the speeding motorist who cries foul when it's them that gets stopped not " all the others who are speeding".

The Police service are cutting money where they can, Air Support is a nice to have, that's why some forces don't have it at the moment. They will be the winners in all of this. they will see an aircraft from time to time.

I've not come across a ring fenced department yet, everyone here is bearing the brunt as well as air support. My local force are a particularly efficient and lean organisation, having made efficiency savings prior to the comprehensive spending review. They had the same 20% cuts to make as the two bloated and wasteful neighbouring forces. Did they moan, or did they get on with it?

I refer you to my previous comment, we could be at the eight base model. Don't be foolish enough to think that this is the last of the cuts and efficiency savings there is more pain to come.

Yes, air support will be a shadow of its former self, pretty much like the value of my house and my pension provisions. There's not a lot we can do about any of them.

:=

Pursuits on merseyside never went away with the helicopter, but they did have more successful outcomes. I am not involved in police flying over liverpool anymore, the liverpool Echo reported yesterday that one of little Rhys Jones killers gang members was caught after a 'crazy' pursuit through the city. Call a shovel a shovel you NPAS people. This is not about a better service, we just HAVE to TRY and save money. The public will accept the truth! All they care about is lower bills.

:D:D
At least some one gets it!!

Wagging Finger wrote
I'm not usually in the habit of saying to strangers "You don't know what you are talking about" but for you I will make an exception.

The shiny new decoration in the offices is a nice to have, as is the glossy publication that is called the annual report on the performance of the force, as is the Equality and Diversity champion in each division, as is the gym equipment and spacious locker facilities and showers in the changing area.

Cars to patrol in, competent Controllers, Custody facilities and Air Support, like Dogs and Firearms Officers, are much more than "nice to have" parts of the job.

The money talked about as savings for this whole NPAS bollocks could be saved by a little bit of common sense instead of tampering with a system that works. As usual in the modern police service, careers of senior officers are being put before the safety of officers and the public.

Those of you who, like me, will be in a police office today, should look around, from the minute you arrive at the car park and think how much of what you see wasn't really needed.


We could have improved Air Support for less than the cost of Airwave, which is better than the old radio, but now most forces can't afford to use it.

Spoken like a true Cop, one that sits in the crew roon looking at a 50inch plasma( we need it for flight safety videos and to show officers pursuits etc) pontificating on how poor officers at division are and how it should be done.

If your going to start looking at what is and isn't needed have a look around the crew room and in a mirror. When was the last time you worked for the whole of a shift, and I don't mean just monitoring logs. Two or three hours flying is a busy shift. What do you do for the other five? We are in a glasshouse, we shouldn't be throwing stones!