1.4 To tidy up the use of the radio spectrum and release a larger part of it to commercial organisations, the Government announced in the early 1990s that the emergency services intended to surrender access to their existing radio frequencies after 2004. With responsibility for the provision of radio communications resting locally in all services, each local body would have to replace its existing systems in the absence of any other solution. In any event, many police radio systems would have had to have been replaced before 2004 because they could not be expanded or upgraded. Spares were proving increasingly difficult to obtain and maintenance costs were rising. In the mid 1990s, some police forces were using systems that were already more than 15 years old, while only two forces had radio systems that were less than five years old.