28 February 2011 | Angeline Albert
Buyers believe they will help UK police forces
achieve £58 million savings in 2011.
The NationalPolicing Improvement Agency (NPIA)
said procurement’s achievements will exceed a police force target set by the Home Office for this
year by £24 million.
As
reported by SM,
the coalition
government has concluded that the NPIA should be phased out by March 2012.
The majority of the £58 million savings will come
from deals on vehicles and fleet, consultancy, forensics, mobile phones,
BlackBerry devices and temporary staff. This year, for example, a national
framework agreement for vehicle fleet will deliver £11.7 million savings and a
framework for forensics is expected to save £2.1 million.
For non-IT procurement overall, the NPIA will
deliver cash savings of more than £28 million in 2011, far surpassing the Home
Office’s £9 million goal. For IT purchasing, it will exceed the £25 million
savings target by delivering just under £30 million.
A new national police procurement hub is expected
to save the money by connecting the finance and ERP systems of all forces to a
common online platform. Its aim is to drive compliance to purchase from
national deals.
The NPIA is leading the Collaborative Police
Procurement Programme (CPPP), which has a target to deliver £285 million
savings to the police service by 2014/15. By working with stakeholders,
including force procurement managers and the Home Office, the NPIA is
officially on target to deliver £50 million savings this year but believes it
will hit £58 million. It is also trying to establish ways of helping the police service save more
than £1 billion by 2015.
The NPIA said savings will come from more efficient
procurement and more effective demand management, including a national approach
to category management. Efficiencies from national contract agreements will
also help, for example, buyers have secured a 30 per cent reduction on the £6.6
million national fingerprint database contract known as “Ident 1”.
The NPIA’s efforts with Airwave (the secure
wireless network for voice and data) for the Olympics is expected to save £47
million over a three year period by combining the requirements of all forces
into a single national deal. The majority of the saving will be made in
2010/11.
Sue Moffatt, NPIA head of commercial and
procurement, said: “Cost effectiveness continues to be a top priority for the
NPIA and these procurement savings are playing a key part in helping the agency
achieve its aim to deliver more than £1 billion of savings for the police
service.”
The coalition
government is looking at which NPIA functions are still needed and how these
might be delivered. The NPIA is working with the Home Office, the Association of Chief Police Officers and Association of Police Authorities to identify which
services should be discontinued, and which should transfer to one of the
successor agencies after 2012.
