On 30 April, Surrey Police Authority announced a joint venture with 13 Surrey councils to share property and other facilities. A business case will be presented to the county council in October.

The West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire and Lincolnshire forces also issued tenders for private sector advisers to review their property in April.

The plans follow a damning Confederation of British Industry (CBI) report on 31 March that said the management of England and Wales’s 43 police forces was costly and ineffective.

A Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) report on 6 May said they should merge to save cash. Since the Budget, police authorities have been under pressure from the government to make £346m-a-year efficiency savings by 2011/12.

Demands for the police to improve efficiency are not new. The government said forces should merge in its Bridging the Gap report five years ago. The CBI and RUSI say little has changed.

Police authorities are starting to respond, says Brian Thompson, public sector partner at Drivers Jonas Deloitte. “I think the smarter, more proactive police forces have realised it is timely to make property savings voluntarily, before the government brings out the stick,” he says.

Peter Williams, chairman of the Surrey Police Authority, says police forces have taken a short-term, isolated approach to budgets and property in the past.

“Once you’d drawn up the budget for the coming year, you breathed a big sigh of relief and didn’t think much about the year after,” he says. “That is starting to change.”

Surrey County Council has created a map of all its publicly owned property. Williams says this will lead the police to collocating with district councils and selling surplus property.

“We can work more effectively by talking to each other in person, and it will eventually lead to money being released. Moving property around is fundamental because it is these savings that will pay for new police officers.”

John Keyes, partner at GVA Grimley, which is bidding for the Yorkshire contracts, says police forces have poorly executed property strategies.

“There will always be a short-termist view in the police because something always comes out of the woodwork, such as new terrorist threats. But they need to take a more long-term approach to property.”

If police authorities react quickly to impending budget cuts with longer-term strategies, however, they could realise big savings.

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