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[Techie1 + 2,024]

Abnormal demand resulted in missed calls for police air support.

The National Police Aviation Service has begun the process of requesting extra funding from the Home Office amid public safety concerns following recent events.

NPAS strategic board chairman Mark Burns-Williamson and West Yorkshire Police Chief Constable Dee Collins, submitted a letter to the Home Secretary in March highlighting concerns around future fleet strategy and financing.

Since then the country has suffered three terrorist incidents, the Grenfell Tower disaster on June 14 and disorder in Stratford on June 25 – leading NPAS to face ‘unprecedented’ demand with a need to provide continuous response.

Helicopters carried personnel and did reconnaissance for up to 13 hours during the Westminster Bridge and Borough Market attacks.

However, they can only fly for two to three hours at a time, so each major incident uses five or six of the UK fleet of 19. This means other calls for police air support go unanswered.

Details of how many requests for air support had to be turned down during the London attacks were redacted from the meeting minutes.

The Home Office failed to respond to March’s letter nor the follow up sent in June which Mr Burns-Williamson described as “unacceptable.”

However, discussions have since taken place between Mr Burns-Williamson, CC Collins and Policing Minister Nick Hurd on the demand for police air support in the future.

“With these plans in place, we hope to demonstrate both the clearly defined requirement to sustain current levels of service to UK policing along with the return on investment to both government, local and national policing bodies.” Mr Burns-Williamson said.

“Consideration is currently being given to alternative models for the future provision of other areas of specialist capability in UK policing. The lessons learned through nationally delivering a 24/7 police air support service will no doubt usefully inform these processes and future direction going forwards.”

The annual spend on helicopters has been slashed from £53.5 million in 2012 to £38.5 million now with eight out of 23 police airfields shut and the service centralised.

A request has now been made by the Home Office for NPAS to submit a fully costed treasury plan for a new fleet by April 2018.

A spokesman for NPAS who described the response and demand as ‘unprecedented’ added: “We need to start considering fleet and funding, clearly there’s a need there with an aging fleet. It’s a bit like cars, you can keep old cars running and they can pass their MOT, aircraft are a little like that – at what point will they stop passing their MOT?”

NPCC Police Aviation Lead and Cambridgeshire Chief Constable, Alec Wood Combs, has sent a questionnaire to chiefs and PCCs asking their requirements for air services in the future and what NPAS needs to do differently. The results from the questionnaire will be used to support NPAS’s treasury plan.

CC Collins, QPM and Air Operations Certificate Holder for NPAS said: “The National Police Air Service is groundbreaking and I’m very proud to be leading it. The men and women in our organisation seek to deliver support across the country to the best of their ability and in doing so, successfully deliver a professional service to every police force throughout England and Wales.

“We have had some challenges in this but nothing that I would not expect as the first ‘pathfinder’ national policing capability.

“We now have an opportunity to work with the Home Office and our partners to develop what the future needs for police aviation are and the resultant cost of achieving it.

“What I am absolutely certain of is the service that NPAS provides is key to challenging some of the risks that our communities face."

A Home Office spokesman said: “We want a modern and flexible air service, which meets the operational needs of forces and represents the best possible value for money for taxpayers.

“It is for the police themselves to determine what air support they need and we will consider their plans once they are brought forward.”  

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[MerseyLLB 8,426]

What is NPAS? 

I vaguely remember 3 years ago when I could actually request the chopper. Now you may as well whistle.

NPAS has decimated air support. Certain forces the request has to go via a Sgt then to the FDO. Then to NPAS for triage.

Then you get told no.

It's utter pants!

[DB11 + 224]

I don't think they're any good for spontaneous incidents; I've not had a positive result from one. Obviously they're good for pre planned events recording and, as mentioned in the article, reconnaissance.

Edited October 23, 2017 by DB11

[HazRat 762]

I always found that it was sick; low cloud base; on another tasking or out of flying time.

[stewie_griffin + 484]

I work in a city of a million people. We have a helicopter flying around most evenings and usually available when you shout up for it.

[Hyphen + 693]

I think this is in keeping with policing in general in the UK. Very little in the way of response policing, very little neighbourhood Policing if any, next to no specialist resources. Air support? Yeah right. 

I think in terms of race to the bottom, we are just about there. 

[Policey_Man + 765]

This isn't just an NPAS issue though. I work in a force that used to have multiple helicopters. Every time we requested one pre-NPAS, the odds of getting a helicopter were probably something like 20% at best - and that is being generous! It definitely hasn't got better, but I think whilst we are considering future requirements, we need to have a look at the policies around how and when air support is deployed. Yes, there were always a lot of 'sick' time, weather issues and so on, but even on the perfect sunny days when you've got serious crime going on - like for example, lots of moped snatches happening which is a serious issue in some parts of the capital - the helicopter won't lift unless you've got a suspect moped in sight or unless you kick up one heck of a fuss, declare it a critical incident and have the request authorised by the duty officer - but even then it's usually a no, helicopter is being used for X.

To be fair, a few times lately - and by that I mean a handful - we have had some pro-active air operations or NPAS have offered air support to incidents they heard when flying past and that was great. But, we could do so much, much, much more, if we had more air support, more often.

I think @Hyphen had it right with his comments about the race to the bottom. Crime is rising because we're only reactive these days, we need to get back on the front foot and we need more resources to support that. A proper and effective air support service would be a good start, but lets not pretend that it's NPAS that's caused this issue, because air support has had issues long before NPAS.

[Mac7 808]

Helicopters used to be frequently available when I first joined. There was never an issue in it supporting spontaneous incidents or the good old cannabis factory flyovers etc.

The cuts have a lot to with it and like so many other things within policing at the moment the deciding factor as to fly or not more than likely starts with a £ and end with a £.

[MerseyLLB 8,426]

When I was a special in Merpol, and that was when NPAS was just a starting up, we were running a lot of plain clothes burglary initiatives in the city and thus generating a lot of proactive work.

I would say that over that summer I had probably at least a dozen suspects on jobs or people make off who were then contained. 

I shouted up for air support, the control room made the request and within a minute or so in each occasion the helicopter came on our channel and told us they were either lifting or diverting from a job elsewhere. At the same time I requested other patrols and a dog. They duly arrived with much haste.

It was fantastic. 

It was proper policing, to quote an old colleague "COPPERS, DOGS AND CHOPPERS" 

By late 2013/2014 The change was noticeable. We were often fighting with GMP and Lancs for use of the helicopter and by this stage the helicopter would be requested for jobs by the control room but the delay between NPAS coming on our channel increased markably. Again gradually the availability tailed off and we started to get NPAS come onto the channel and state merely "NPAS monitoring but not lifting."

Fast forward a year from that and if it wasn't a preplanned operation it was Russian roulette if the control room would even make the request. Some areas started to require a supervisor to make the request. The answer started to become NO more and more and officers stopped asking. Over the same period the availability of dogs tailed off too with often only 1 dog available in the county. Response teams took a kicking as well so suddenly the ability to put as decent containment on was negatively affected - further frustrating any attempt to secure attendance of dogs/NPAS.

On coming back down south, I haven't ever had an NPAS request approved. So I'm cynical.

[Mac7 808]

I was going to mention the Dog situation. Dog handlers in my force have been decimated meaning they are a forgotten resource and massively underused.

[Beaker 817]

2 hours ago, MerseyLLB said:

By late 2013/2014 The change was noticeable. We were often fighting with GMP and Lancs for use of the helicopter and by this stage the helicopter would be requested for jobs by the control room but the delay between NPAS coming on our channel increased markably. Again gradually the availability tailed off and we started to get NPAS come onto the channel and state merely "NPAS monitoring but not lifting."

I've been there.  Someone requested a helicopter, was offered a dog unit instead.  I was surprised, didn't know dogs had wings.