Case Studies

Police ‘basket of goods’

by Mark Rowe

Some police forces pay as little as £279 for a bicycle while for others it may cost as much as £539. A police motor cycle helmet may cost a forces as little as £291; others as much as £656. These are among the discrepancies in the latest police spending on goods and services data from the Home Office.

Nick Hurd, Minister for Police and Fire, said: “This year, taxpayers will be investing an additional £460m in our police system. They do not expect the police to waste their money through inefficient procurement. I congratulate the police on impressive progress in recent years to squeeze out inefficiency. However these numbers show that the work is not complete. We will continue to work with the police to make sure that the taxpayer is getting value for money.

At the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, APCC Lead for Business Enablers and Chair of the National Commercial Board, Jason Ablewhite, Cambridgeshire PCC, added: “I very much welcome the work of Police and Crime Commissioners, forces and others to deliver significant savings from more effective procurement. The Collaborative Law Enforcement Procurement (CLEP) Programme has been very active in supporting forces, including through standardisation and aggregation in areas such as uniform and vehicles. We will continue to identify further opportunities to make substantial savings for policing – including through more complex areas, such as construction and, where appropriate, trying to support national sourcing approaches.

“The public rightly expect policing to be as efficient as possible and through the National Commercial Board, which oversees the work of the CLEP programme, we will be looking at the options for a future commercial operating model to ensure greater coordination of commercial activity at a regional and national level.”

The Government can point to savings in this year’s figures resulting from the Collaborative Law Enforcement Programme (CLEP), whereby police forces collaborate. For example, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire forces bought uniforms together to halve the cost of their fleeces from £32.95 to £15.95. Four Yorkshire forces – South Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Humberside – also worked together to reduce prices of vehicles by up to £10,000 per vehicle since 2016 to 2017. Fleeces, jackets, utility belts and telephone interpretation service also saw similar savings in other force areas. For the full data visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/basket-of-goods-2018.

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