Green Light For Joint Road Policing Unit
Tuesday, 22 February, 2011
Bedfordshire's and Hertfordshire's Police Authorities have given the go-ahead to set up a joint road policing unit for the two counties from April this year.
The new joint unit will include officers and staff from both forces and cover Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. It will deal with all road policing issues, including traffic patrols, the deployment and development of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology, investigations into serious road collisions and road deaths, traffic management and vehicle recovery.
In its first full year, the joint function will save both forces around £654,000 and this is expected to increase in subsequent years to almost £700,000 per annum.
The move follows the establishment of a number of successful collaborative initiatives for the two forces over recent years, including a joint Dog Unit, Scientific Services Unit and Major Crime Unit.
Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire are moving towards establishing a Strategic Policing Alliance with Cambridgeshire which will enable the three forces and police authorities to work together to establish further collaborative units in due course, including a three-force road policing function.
Peter Conniff, Chair of Bedfordshire Police Authority, commented: "The creation of this new joint Unit will enable the two forces to pool their resources in this specialised area of policing bringing operational efficiencies and financial savings.
Stuart Nagler, Chair of Hertfordshire Police Authority added: "This decision will bring greater resilience and efficiency to this key area of policing. It will also contribute significantly to the savings needed to enable Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire to limit the impact of the budget cuts on our frontline policing."
The work of the Joint Collaboration Programme is overseen by a Joint Working Group, which now includes representatives of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire police authorities. This is chaired by Peter Conniff, Chair of Bedfordshire Police Authority, with Stuart Nagler as Vice-Chair.
