News
New NPIA purchasing agreement saves policing £3.4m
Posted on Fri 29th Oct 2010 at 14:10
22 October 2010
A new generation of police vehicles will save tax payers over £3m a year, thanks to the work of the National Policing Improvement Agency.
Currently about 5,600 vehicles across a number of makes and models are purchased every year by police forces across the UK, costing around £83m.
But a new procurement framework, coordinated by the NPIA and created with the National Association of Police Fleet Managers (NAPFM), reduces hundreds of vehicle options into 18 categories involving just 25 different suppliers, slashing the cost of vehicle purchasing by about £3.4m every year.
A new "ready to drive" specification for the most popular and recognised police vehicle - the "beat car" - has been put in place. Four suppliers (Ford, Vauxhall, Hyundai and Peugeot) will now deliver fully modified cars that are liveried to national standards and have IT, lightbars and safety equipment fully installed.
As the only single policing organisation in the UK, the NPIA has spearheaded this collaboration across 54 police forces.
NPIA Director of Resources and Procurement Portfolio Chairman for the Association of Chief Police Officers Dr David Horne said:
"The Agency has facilitated this procurement framework, which will now deliver immediate savings to those police forces placing orders for cars, vans, motorbikes and a range of other police vehicles.
"To put a £3.4m saving into context: this is the cost of an average force's entire fleet budget. So this is a significant saving but cost is just one part of the overall picture.
"Through collaboration we are able to standardise how police vehicles are used across the UK, which means further efficiencies are possible in areas like training and mutual-aid."
Other benefits of national procurement collaboration include:
* By undertaking a single procurement process once for all police vehicles, the NPIA will save most forces an average £25k per procurement activity - a total potential saving of about £1.35m over the four year contract.
* Delivery of an order will be slashed by an average four weeks under the new framework, which will increase police productivity.
* And in recent months, the NPIA's procurement teams have helped the police service to avoid paying an additional £3.1m by successfully renegotiating a national tyre framework.
The new framework is backed by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Police Federation. Fire, NHS and coastguard services are also able to access the framework to purchase vehicles, the first time such a framework has been made available to all blue-light services.
Richard Flint, Head of Transport Services at North Yorkshire Police and chairman of the NAPFM, said:
"The NAPFM has a long track record of collaboration across the police service. The combination of collaboration and the need to find efficiencies led us to work with the NPIA on what has been a major procurement exercise.
"The new framework - which would not have been possible without the work of the NPIA's procurement team - is a single gateway for the police service and, for the first time, all other blue light emergency services to purchase vehicles for their fleet.
"Yet again it shows how the police service can lead the rest of the public sector at a time when austerity measures necessitate a new and broader way of delivering maximum savings to the taxpayer."
The fleet and tyre frameworks are part of the NPIA's Cost Effectiveness Programme, which aims to find nearly £300m in non-IT savings for the police service by 2013.
