Central procurement for police…but will it save money?

Today, Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary writing in the Times, outlined an ambitious plan to pay for an additional 13,000 frontline officers by tackling the staggering procurement challenge faced by forces across England and Wales saving an estimated ￡360m.

Read the article here

Figures revealed in freedom of information requests submitted by Labour have found that the cost of patrol vehicles ranged from ￡12,500 for Staffordshire police to ￡22,361 in Cheshire. The cost of a high-performance vehicle in Merseyside was ￡55,000 — double the ￡27,000 paid by Lancashire. A standard police baton ranged from ￡20 in Leicestershire to more than ￡120 in Northamptonshire. A motorcycle helmet ranged from ￡467.49 in Derbyshire to ￡628.50 in Staffordshire. So, the issue is a real one and you would assume there are savings to be made.

But can it work in reality? Grand procurement plans in government are not new, in fact they are pretty common, particularly around election time. Most however have difficulty in delivery.?

By removing discretion from individual units, you often end up creating a more bureaucratic machine than intended. This can cost more to run and rarely procures items at the lower end of the available range, more often there is a premium paid and a fixed cost that factors in variations and fluctuations that far exceed normal bounds.?

This has been played out multiple times in the past, but looking to the future we might see a different path for this initiative. For example, Policing consists of 43 forces in England and Wales alone and the disparity of costs of crucial equipment, so disparate in this case, means finding significant savings, should be a given. Then there is the obvious advantage of commercial drivers and the large number of great SME's and start-ups who are in the ecosystem of suppliers to Policing who will invariably benefit from greater investment and a confluence in procurement.?

One of those likely to benefit, who Heligan knows well, is CCL Solutions Group , a Digital Forensics provider to UK Policing. They are perfectly placed to be a key supplier to this new National Framework.