Herts Police forms new links with neighbouring forces

Herts Police has entered into a historic collaboration with two other forces in a bid to save money for frontline policing.

The new plan, agreed between Herts, Beds and Cambs Police, will see more services shared between the forces, including financial services, human resources, training, ICT and custody and crime recording.

Herts Police and Crime Commissioner David Lloyd, who signed the Memorandum of Understanding this week, said: “Today’s agreement will play a big part in meeting the financial challenges we all face.

“As I outlined in my Open Letter, published last week, we need to find ways of making some of our centralised operations more efficient so that we can keep putting resources into frontline neighbourhood policing in each of the county’s ten boroughs and districts.

“Working more closely with Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire on ‘back-office’ and other shared functions is one of the ways we can do this and I am delighted to be able to announce progress in this area.”

It is hoped the arrangement will protect frontline policing, help safeguard police officer numbers and maximise the return to the taxpayer.

However, it has been noted that not all services are suitable for the partnership, and local policing, including incident response and neighbourhood policing, will continue to be delivered by the individual forces.

Chief Constable Andy Bliss added: “This agreement will help us in our endeavours to make Hertfordshire an even safer county.

“We have a track record of successful collaboration with Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire and this will help us protect frontline policing in the future as much as possible.”