7. Officers working in adjoining forces are often obliged to cross into each other's areas. Motorway patrol officers may have no choice but to do so because of the limited number of motorway exits. In cases of hot pursuit of a suspect, the pursuing officers need to notify the force into whose area they are crossing. Such notification is essential when the suspects are armed as the express authority of a Chief Police Officer of the host force is necessary before firearms can be deployed. The ability to operate and communicate across geographic boundaries is also important for police forces that operate across the country, such as the National Crime Squad and the British Transport Police. The Home Office was however unable to provide us with data on the numbers or proportions of police officers routinely operating outside their force boundaries.5
8. Interoperability between forces was only one of a number of features of the new system that had been designed to deliver an improved service. Police control rooms would be able to locate and talk to officers in areas where there is currently no radio reception. The new system would also allow officers to communicate with one another when responding to a major incident. Such communication is often difficult at present, particularly at airports and in rural areas.6
9. Prior to the development of a full business case for Airwave, police forces were asked to examine the potential impact of a new radio system on their efficiency. Work by Thames Valley Police Force suggested that around 37% of a uniformed officer's time was spent in the police station. If Airwave could help bring about a 10% reduction in the time spent by officers in police stations, a saving of approximately £37 million a year could be achieved, allowing an extra 1200 officers to be deployed on the streets. In 2001, PITO established a Business Benefits Steering Group to oversee work to determine what functions of Airwave have the potential to deliver benefits and how to measure these benefits.7
10. The Home Office told us that the Airwave system would help to secure direct savings in officer time. For instance, officers would be able to make and receive telephone calls rather than having to return to the station to pick up a message on an answering machine. The suggested saving of £37 million a year was only an illustrative figure and it was also important to recognise that the benefits of the new system were not just to make extra police officers available for operational duties. The system would also make officers more effective by providing them with up-to-date equipment. There had been a choice about how far to go, but the Home Office viewed Airwave as a key part of equipping the police properly and therefore making them more effective. PITO was now putting in place measures to identify how police operations were being conducted prior to implementation of Airwave and the benefits that will arise after implementation. Some areas where Airwave is expected to improve police performance are listed in Figure 2 below.8
Figure 2: Examples of areas where Airwave is expected have a benefit | |
Feature | Benefit to the police |
High Quality Transmission | Ease and speed of communication, reliable and understandable voice messages. Less need for messages to be repeated. |
Encryption | Greater security of information, criminals unable to use scanners in order to intercept police communications and greater privacy for personal information potentially transmitted over the radio. |
Talk Groups | Enables everyone on a particular operation to hear radio messages intended purely for them and no-one else. Relevance of information received is therefore higher with less distracting background information. |
Data Services | Access to Police National computer and other data checking services while on the beat. Expected to lead to greater detection of crime as checks are made more rapidly and more frequently. |
Management Information | Enables senior officers to have a greater understanding of the deployment of their officers and so improves command and control. |
Emergency Button | Improved officer safety and improved officer morale. |
Source: C&AG'S Report
11. The Home Office hoped that Airwave would improve the quality of communications within police forces, and improvement was evident from the early implementations of the system in Lancashire and North Yorkshire. There had been some valuation of other benefits expected from the new system, but the greatest benefit would be the additional functionality and capability of the new system in terms of operational policing. Although the benefits of a national system had not been priced before the decision was taken to go ahead, a benefits realisation exercise was now underway. PITO was putting in place measures to identify current practices and to measure the benefits achieved once Airwave was operational across police forces.9
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7 C&AG's Report, paras 3.27-3.28, 3.30