Police helicopter costs more than £100k a year
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POLICE could be spending more than £100,000 a year on helicopter support in Runcorn and Widnes according to Freedom Of Information (FOI) data.
Figures released by West Yorkshire Police (WYP), where the National Police Air Service is based, said a chopper was requested in the area 13 times during January this year.
WYP declined two of those calls, and Cheshire police cancelled four, leaving seven that the helicopter responded to and was not turned back.
The seven incidents attended related to two thermal imaging requests, two for finding an injured person, one for a search for a suspect and two for photo imagery requests.
FOI data provided by WYP said the six cancelled and denied requests were three suspect searches, two injured person searches and a vehicle search.
Nine of the incidents were for WA7, Runcorn, post codes and four were for WA8, Widnes.
NPAS said helicopters were in flight for between five and 21 minutes for the actioned calls.
The NPAS’s annual budget was about £39m last financial year and in 2015-16, which is the most recent annual data available, attended 28,147 calls at an approximate cost of £1385.58 per attended call, not including incidents where the chopper was called off.
For Halton in January this year, this works out as at least £9,699.06 for the month, rising to £15,241.38 if cancelled flights are included.
If levels of use remained steady throughout the year, then the cost of calls would rise to £116,388.72.
NPAS’s budget has now fallen to £38.33 for 2017-18. ●