Lincolnshire Police’s partnership with G4S has been held up as an example to other forces of how outsourcing back office services can work.
In the foreword to the recently-published G4S LIncolnshire Police Strategic Partnership – One Year On report, Police and Crime Commissioner Alan Hardwick said: “Perhaps we can give others across the country the inspiration to seek innovative solutions for the provision of efficient and effective public services in an ever challenging and demanding environment”.
The report shows that in its first year, the partnership with G4S has achieved savings in excess of 18 per cent – or £5million a year – way above the 13.6 per cent savings predicted.
That equates to the cost of 35 more officers.
G4S Policing Support Services managing director John Shaw said: “This has been achieved with no loss of service, and in many areas real service improvements.
“It is an outstanding result and one which we’ll be able to improve upon over the life of the contract.”
The report also highlights a number of other success achieved during the first year of the partnership, which has seen G4S take on a range of responsibilities, including managing custody suites, processing firearms licences and the “Street to Suite” service, which operates in Lincoln, Boston and Spalding.
Key achievements shown in the report include:
l 999 call response improved to an average of over 93 per cent of calls answered within ten seconds, up from an average of 89 per cent in 2011/12;
l A four-month backlog of files for processing firearms licenses has been cleared and files are now proactively prepared up to two months in advance;
l HR transformation completed nine months ahead of schedule;
l Launch of Street to Suite service resulted in saving more than 1,850 hours of police officers time;
l Delivered more than 21,000 training days.