When a "business" as new as NPAS is in need of a fundamental rethink, then surely an arse needs kicking.

NPAS is 6 years old and has steadily gone down hill.
There will now be a race the bottom when they add the FW and sweet FA is done as a consequence of the HMIC report. The Cambridge advert is designed to address the HMIC report, which is farcical really because we don't need 40k pro rata to understand and stop the rot - more cabs and more money.
That ain't going to happen.
Meanwhile the boss of NPAS will probably be moved on via a promotion thinking he's done a cracking job and the CC W Yorks will continue with her head in the sand.
I can't wait to hear what the Aviation head of the NPCC will do to address the HMIC report.
FW will be the death knell of NPAS, the remaining PCC's who support NPAS now will simply roll over and accept defeat when it comes to response times.....:{:ugh:

I can't help thinking this is a polite way to say, here are the people who screwed it. Indeed we do.

Nobody was better placed to stand up and shout, "This will not work!" but instead, we got slash and burn. Which (to be fair) is probably what they were asked to do.

Not any more. It's closed.

Oooh. Tell us more, please. Pretty please.

"we have been relying on the charity of the Wattisham and Borehamwood."


I think you mean Boreham:)

NPAS Cambridge?
 

A friend of mine who works in ops at Cambridge Airport has just told me that the rumour doing the rounds at the airport is that a police helicopter is going to be based there!!

Oooooer Matron / Maid Marion lol , :p:p steady on plus the FW Vulcanair asset from Sherwood Forest, not bad going:ok:

If it dies sorry :E:p:p does Come to fruition then I imagine they would share the same area as where Anglia One is on site.

Cheers

They are not happy in Wales:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/w...mpression=true

Two things:

Cambridge Airport are not renewing any future aviation company contracts at their airfield forcing them to depart further afield. The reason is under wraps but the front runner for rumour is that Cambridge (Marshall's) will be selling off big chunks of their airfield for housing and very very soon.................. Police helicopter base in amongst a housing estate - I don' think so.

Secondly, Wales as a country - hasn't had a police air support for 3 years. Dyfed first then N Wales were next.
No wonder someone's kicking off that National Police Sir Support is one big joke!

Is that where you get a Knighthood for closing down a unit?

From March's Police Aviation News, Essex's PCC commenting on their use of a drone:

"National Police Air support is one big joke"

Yes! - and to think that I got the sack for saying that in 2011! But nobody wanted to listen.

TF

I was surprised to see an NPAS aircraft overhead Pewsey a few nights ago. The coppers I mentioned it to (my surprise, they already knew the helicopter was there) in passing said it was unusual to get air support. In this case a sporty Merc had been stolen from Devizes and picked up nearby. The ensuing chase netted all 3 involved.

It's a shame that the combined ASU / HEMS from Devizes had to go in the NPAS mess, it was so much more regular a sight then. Hey ho. Progress, I suppose.

NRF, But in contrast, my old Filton based unit will soon be moving to a brand new combined base with the GW Air Ambulance at Almondsbury, just the other side of the motorway to the Big RAC building.

TF

Essex's PCC thinks he gets a pretty rubbish service from NPAS despite there being FIVE helicopters based in his county. He should spare a thought for counties like Norfolk who don't even have one based in the county, or the surrounding counties for that matter.

Police and Crime Commissioner Tim Passmore said they would not replace the National Police Air Service (NPAS) helicopter, which serves the region from Essex and has regularly faced his criticism for the cost of “dead flying time” on journeys. In his statement he included a typical jibe at the helicopter service - “It will complement, not substitute for the helicopter. We get a pretty rubbish service from the NPAS and I think this will help reassure people – particularly in the north of the county.”
It was the Suffolk PCC Tim Passmore

And he is right, but he should have fought a bit harder to keep the asset. In fact he didn't fight at all IMHO

Hmm, be very interesting to see what proposed areas are deemed to be sold off If you recall a decade or so ago, the orignal plan for Marshalls leave / pressure by the council to relocate to either Wyton, or share space with Mildenhall. Consquently the City peeps at ****e Hall could rub their hands in glee and build new houses with gusto. That has not happened thankfully and where could Marshalls relocate to then within the region? You can forget the two aforementioned bases

Or unless some bright spark thinks of Alconbury then will approach Huntingdon District again, followed by Urban & Civic / Saviles who own the airfield now. Get them to stop tearing up the runway on Alconbury Weald and stop all construction (bit late as several very large warehosues/offices almost hangar like in size and appearence have been built) plus a new village Then ask the remaining USAFE 501st next door if they would not mind their former digs the other side of the fence being a commercial airport/MRO. Laughingly that was a proposal for an air cargo hub 2 deacdes ago when the USAFE closed that side down and MoD flogged the airfield bit off. Ironically it was not all of Huntingdon, The STukelys opposition that killed the idea but the then BR before it got privatised. As BR was gonna pay for extension / loading area / freight terminal from the Huntingdon to Peterborough line which goes past the airfield. British Rail or WAGN pulled out, so i heard.

Also there is a desparation to build houses here..does not matter if it is in a tiny crack of where a dilapidated shack was. There is even talk of developers wanting to build apartments in a pub car park! For those of you who know my old neck of the woods, there is Histon, a village which is on the outskirts. Beside the (Mis on Un) Guided Busway (formerly a train line which linked the city to the other villages and up to Huntingdon) lies the Railway Vue Pub. Please look at it on google earth, and check out the car park because developers are itching to build on it, but let the pub remain as it is. Mates mate who lives next door but one pub says the developers have twice been unsuccessful in applying for planning application. He says there have been leaflets dropped in every villagers letterbox about this situation.

Everyone knows here in from the Mathematical Bridge to Cambridge City FC gorund and from Madingley to Ely Cathedral that Marshalls would not nor never bow down to pressure from ****e Hall to move/sell unless it was in their best (financial) interests. The two major bigwigs here are the Uni and Marshalls, nothing moves or breaks wind here unless either one says so.

Looking at what Marshalls offer -

1) Marshalls Business Aviation and Marshalls Executive Aviation -Corporate aviation is a big thing here, location wise its perfect considering the high tech industry / silicon fen around here.

2) C-130 work here anyone who operates a Herk from the Arctic Circle to the Mid East comes in.

3) Few flying clubs including Aeromega Helicopters, Cambridge Flying Club, Cambridge Aero Club (Tiger Moth pairs)

4) BA Cityflyer uses the runway here for their London City Embrer E170 crews to practise their approaches every other weekend to emulate the small tight confines practise of London City.

5) Anglia One is based here

etc etc

Admittedly the mil aviation business for Marshalls maybe a tad slow , and they closed their Defence vehicle place at Mildenhall (just opposite Folly Lane / spotters area on the south side of runway 29 of RAF Mildenhall) the other year.

Anyhow with all the expansion or implosion here, logic dictates be nice to have NPAS presence here.

cheers

As it's not April 1st, I guess might be pukka:
Aer Lingus jet photobombs the royal wedding over Windsor | Daily Mail Online

Some good(?) stuff here on NPAS in May's Police Aviation News:
http://www.policeaviationnews.com/Ac...PANMay2018.pdf

Is there any update on NPAS's Vulcanair P68 fixed wing? The hangar was competed a long time ago, but nothing has been seen operating from Doncaster as yet.

Did they do a landaway and are still looking for AVGAS?

They don't meet the op requirements apparently. Can't put them into service due to their fuel load and endurance.
Millions down the drain.

It beggars belief if that is true.

I hear that NPAS have decided that civilian TFOs are no longer a good idea. They get paid more or less the same as a PC and don't "think" like a bobby on the ground does.

Rumour also has it that there is a contingency plan to go down to 5 "priority" bases in the event that serviceability falls below a certain level.

"I have to point out that the money certainly did not go down the drain!

Obviously it went into someone's pocket, and Air Support got nothing to show for it."

How very......African? Not really how we expect contracts to work in UK!

Is that confirmed as true?

Funny old thing...what were some of us saying at the start? :ugh:

If it is true that the P68 does not meet requirements there is a conundrum in that it has passed the EASA FIKI.

If it has FIKI I would assume it meets all aspects....and yet the suggestion [well much more than that] is that there is an element of the flight envelope it does not meet.

So a suspicion is emerging that face saving might be the order of the day.

As FIKI is a small part of the mission there is at least a possibility that the aircraft could enter service and do most of the mission and thereby avoid entering the 'missing' parameter. Avoid flying on damp and cold winter days and nights.

That would save face and it is unlikely to emerge for a few years in which time a replacement airframe might be acquired.

I accept this theory is full of holes but on one hand I understood that there was not a snowballs chance of it meeting the spec and yet another source has suggested that it will enter service later in the summer.

They're fitting bigger fuel tanks.

I take it that there are no issues with maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) and maximum landing weight (MLW)?

They are micromanaging the crew, shorter, leaner......

And to make matters worse: The aircraft don't seem to meet the EASA minimum rate of climb requirements for OEI.
They could always use them as temporary portacabins I guess.

What a calamity - and they can't claim they weren't told this couldn't work.

Its been a total cluster**** from start to finish! They refused to listen to those of us who were saying that they were working from a flawed principle back in 2010, and they continued to work from their flawed plan ever since. The whole concept of the successful years prior to 2010 was to get the asset overhead the scene of the crime or incident, within 10-15 minutes so that there was a good chance of making a difference to the outcome. 33 aircraft operating from 27 bases provided that possibility, and perhaps even more importantly gave the hard pressed guys & gals on the ground additional confidence. The public also, were re assured that the Police were there to protect them, and the helicopter overhead was a symbol of that presence.

Today with the fleet down to just a few aircraft, that almost instantaneous presence overhead almost never happens. The distances to travel are just too great and the deterrent factor has been lost. Any Practical Police Officer with experience of what was needed to produce a good TFO would have told you, that they needed to be an experienced Police Officer with an in depth knowledge of their area. It is true that they needed to be a proven thief catcher and possessed the character to do that from the air. There could never be any real savings from training a civilian to do the job because the skills and abilities required demanded a salary very similar to that of a mid service PC. The loss of flexibility was actually a negative factor.

The NPAS disaster was bound to happen as it has. The report that gave it life was written by someone with no knowledge of what had made UK Police Air Support into the the most effective operational tool that it was. It could have been made better by centralised command and control delivered on a Regional basis to ensure wide cover of the asset. There were huge savings to be made from centralised training, Insurance and maintenance contracts. Standardisation of aircraft too!
But no the only mantra to be followed was that of cutting slashing and burning all that had been achieved. The Concept of air SUPPORT was forgotten. The idea of being able to identify and pinpoint the criminal was no longer important, - just save money.

Sadly today, because the Police Service has been almost withdrawn from our lives the criminal has realised that there is nothing to stop him anymore and he is free to do what he wants! Driving standards have plummeted because there is no one stopping and advising. Violent crime is rapidly increasing, again who is there to stop them? We lost it, - because no one could see the folly of the Mantra "Just save money , nothing else matters". NPAS epitomises that thought process.

Tigerfish, you have summed it up well.

What IMHO also needs said is that as a taxpayer, I am inclined to think that what has been done to Air Support, is not all bad.

Even if you ignore the effects of the Banking Bastards having the country over a barrel, the public purse is not a magic money tree. We need value for money, and through no fault of the troops, the money spent on the ASU was not providing that.

Conviction rates and more importantly, sentencing policy, has undermined the Police Service, and eroded respect for law and order. To use a helicopter, a dozen cops, a dog and damage two Volvo estates, in order to apprehend a scrote who is back out to re offend on the same day, and nine months later gets a suspended sentence or Community Service Order, is piss poor value. When the courts are going to let them straight back out to do it again, instead of locking them up for five years, why bother?

AirPolice, I understand where you are coming from, and in many ways I too despair at the weak sentencing policies, that have resulted in a situation where crime is encouraged to foster. But there is a deeper picture to bear in mind, if we keep stopping and arresting those blighters that were damaging that Volvo, sooner or later they will get the message or get locked up. The only way of stemming the current crime wave, especially Violent crime, is to increase the arrest and detection rate! The Criminal has cottoned on to the fact that more than ever before, he now has an open Goal, - today there is almost nothing and no-one to stop him, - the criminal currently has the freedom to operate with very little chance of being caught That simply has to change and change quickly.

This situation was brought about by Politicians who thought that as crime was going down a few years ago, they could remove most of the Policing that had achieved that, and that the Criminal would not notice that there was no policing any more!

TF

In a nutshell, tigerish, in a nutshell.
:D :D

Cambs happenings
 

As all knows that in Cambridge, the main Police station is closing in 3 years due to the cells are not up to Home Office Standards. No firm plans to where the new station will be relocated, one idea is to make do and share space with East of England Ambulance Service.

Anyhow in another post I mentioned GB Helicopters AS355F-NP with camera mount was up on thursday afternoon then returned to film over Cambridge as late as 2100 hours...which caused concern to local public due to it hovering over Parkside Police station thus automatically assumed it was one of NPAS's finest lol. i saw it fly over one's office space garden and hovering over city center (15 minute walk / 5 minute drive dependent on traffic jams).

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/839/2...8666d583_k.jpg

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/844/2...c2940102_k.jpg

Apparently according to Cambridge Evening News, the police spokeperson said it was pre arranged to hover over our lovely police station with permission and nothing to be alarmed about but no reason given...why it was above most of the day and night.

cheers

That's serious endurance for an AS355 of any model.