The UK government is shortly

expected to agree to the funding of

half of the cost of a new helicopter for

Cambridgeshire Police Force.

“Our existing helicopter is a 1989

AS 355, with 6,000 hours on it, so

it’s starting to get too old for police

use,” said unit executive officer,

Cambridgeshire Constabulary Air

Support Unit, Tony Yeldham. “It’s

starting to suffer from those sorts of

niggles that you find in ageing

helicopters and the maintenance

requirements will only get more

costly. All of those issues caused us to

look at changing it.

In addition, there’s government

funding available, provided that they

accept your bid,” he said, which he is

hopeful that they will. “So it’s an ideal

opportunity for the force to take

advantage of that.”

He explained: “We haven’t actually

ordered the new Explorer yet – what

we’ve done is we’ve gone through a

selection process, a fairly exhaustive

selection process.

“We’ve analysed the aircraft and

had a fly-off involving the Agusta 109,

the EC135 and MD 902,” he

continued. “We then did capital

costings and then we did whole-life

costings over the next ten-year

period. We found that the 902 met our

operational requirements and that

with the whole-life costs as well, it

was the best aircraft of the three.”

According to Yeldham, it was their

preferred aircraft, but they still do not

know what kind of funding the

government are prepared to give

them. “We’re hoping to find out in the

next few weeks, and all being

well, we’d place an order so that the

aircraft came online in about April

2005,” he said.

“There are two issues in terms

of performance, one is the safety

issue and the second is operational.

Safety-wise, it operates at helipad

performance at all weights, up to all

reasonable temperatures. So its

performance is much better than our

current aircraft.

“Our biggest operation so far has

to have been the Soham case,” he

explained. Referring to the notorious

crime in which two young girls were

murdered in 2002, he said: “When

Holly and Jessica first went missing,

we carried out extensive aerial

searches throughout Soham and the

rest of Cambridgeshire.

“Up until the tragic moment when

the girls bodies were discovered, we

were still very heavily involved in

the investigation. Of course, such

high profile and large-scale cases

are infrequent, but we are fully

equipped to cope if and when they

do occur. The new helicopter would

only improve our abilities and

potential,” he said.

“We have a large constituency and

the helicopter is deployed more often

than people might think. It’s a very

important part of police operations.

“Now we have to wait and see

whether our application for funding

has been successful.” He concluded:

“The benefits will be huge if we can

purchase this new aircraft.”