CHESHIRE Police have struck a deal with Northampton Police to share a number of non-frontline services to save money and deliver more efficient working.
A shared service, based at Cheshire’s Winsford headquarters, will be created to provide aspects of human resources, finance and procurement support for both forces.
Margaret Ollerenshaw, chairman of Cheshire Police Authority, said: “Today is a milestone in the history of both police authorities and forces and the Police Authority considered this matter in great detail before agreeing to move forward with Northamptonshire.
“We face tough financial challenges and over four years and are having to identify over £34 million of savings from the policing budget in Cheshire.
“Our responsibility is to ensure the Constabulary prioritises frontline services and wherever possible, identifies opportunities to make savings in other areas. “The proposals agreed mean that a number of ‘back office’ functions can be delivered at a significantly reduced cost – essential if we are to balance the budget in the months and years ahead.”
Cheshire has already made savings of almost £12 million and has plans to save a further £12 million this year.
The force is looking at opportunities for collaborate with other forces.
Chief Constable David Whatton (pictured) said: “This is a great opportunity to deliver improved support service s to operational police officers and, at the same time, reduce costs in a way that doesn’t take police officers and staff away from serving the community.
“I recognise the impact that the new shared support with Northamptonshire will have on some of the men and women who have given many years of loyal support to the Constabulary. Inevitably, this means there will be fewer people delivering our support services, but this will not detract from our desire to make Cheshire an ever safer place to live and work.”
Cheshire and Northamptonshire’s police headquarters are around 90 miles apart and the shared service will involve the use of advanced technology.
Joint working to save police money
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Gary Skentelbery
Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.
4 Comments
The last line sums up the worry we should all have with the Police and technology…… remember the cop who left his back door open and then got burgled. They took his wallet which contained un-encrypted information including the details of a police drug informant!! It might save money but so would cutting the salaries of the chief constable….. bad Idea!
Maybe a number of north west police services should merge in to a single north west police service and gain the economies of scale. Some of course might argue that to do so would mean that you could lose local knowledge from police living in the patch, the reality of course is that now many police commute and don’t live in their patch anyway, and many change from one police force to another to gain promotion, in a bigger police service they wouldn’t have to do that.
An extremely bad idea! It’s bad enough making sure that info is kept safe within Cheshire Police, sharing it with others doesn’t bear thinking about. There have been enough examples throughout the Country of things going very wrong with the sharing of info. I agree, it would be a very good idea to cut the salaries of the CC and his senior managment team to enable more Police on the beat not less. It’s all about priorities. This is just a sop to the public to seem to be doing something about waste and we are not stupid enough to believe it! What does Margaret Ollerenshaw know about any of this?
We’re talking about sharing back office (mainly civilian staffed) functions here – HR, finance, and procurement. NOT front-line policing, information or intelligence.