On the road to saving money

Bedfordshire’s and Hertfordshire’s police authorities have given the go-ahead for the new team, which will include officers from both Beds Police and Herts Constabulary.

It will deal with all road policing issues, including traffic patrols, the deployment and development of Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology, investigations into serious road collisions and road deaths, traffic management and vehicle recovery.

The move will save both forces around £654,000 in the first year, and the figure is expected to increase in subsequent years to almost £700,000 per annum.

The combination of resources follows 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.

Beds and Herts are now hoping to establish a strategic policing alliance with Cambridgeshire which will enable the three forces and police authorities to work to establish further collaborative units.

Peter Conniff, chairman of Bedfordshire Police Authority, said: “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, chairman of Hertfordshire Police Authority, said: “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.”